Design of Porous, Biodegradable, Polymer Scaffolds for Localised Drug Delivery in the Treatment of Breast Cancer

Abstract

Scaffolds have been used before but separately to locally deliver drugs in order to kill cancerous cells and also to promote the re-growth of tissues in the body. A new polymer composition of PLGA(75-25):PCL 50:50, has shown promising cell surface interactions so this paper outlines the materials and methods that can be used to incorporate chemotherapy drugs into the scaffold to make cancer treatment localized and therefore more efficient whilst reducing its negative impacts. A comparison of paclitaxel (PTX) and prodigiosin (PG) as potential drugs was carried out. Porous, biodegradable scaffolds were used as they are known to provide a suitable matrix for cell attachment and cell spreading and research was carried out to see how structure change with degradation affects the drug release kinetics. Scaffolds were formed using the solvent casting and particle leaching methods. Scanning electron-microscopy was used to characterize the scaffolds as they degraded. It was found that porosity for PTX scaffolds increased after 1 week which correlated with another burst in drug release followed by a constant release phase. The PG scaffold structure did not degrade significantly and this is shown through the slow, flat drug release profile. PTX resulted in greater cancer cell death than PG but both scaffolds had a decrease in cell viability by at least 40% in 72 hours of drug release whilst still remaining under the cytotoxic limit.. The PLGA:PCL composition is therefore promising for use in localized drug delivery applications as it offers a sustained drug release over the degradation period with significant cell death and thus offers a much more positive cancer treatment than conventional options.