Nome: Emanuella Sarmento Alho de Sousa

N°USP: 10937192
Orientador: Joilson de Oliveira Martins
Tópicos em Fisiopatologia e Toxicologia I (FBC 5793)

Relatório 5

Speaker: André Moreni Lopes

Co-encapsulation of drugs in polymeric vesicles decorated with transferrin for

targeted cancer therapy

It is known that conventional therapy may be effective for some types of cancer, but it
cannot be successful in many types of malignant solid tumors. Another negative aspect
of the conventional treatment is that because they have low specificity, they end up
affecting healthy cells, causing discomfort to the patient. The objective of the research
presented was to evaluate the conventional treatment vs drug delivery system (DDS),
using amphiphilic copolymers composed of PEC-PCL, forming polymeric vesicles,
which are hydrophobic (bio) molecules encapsulated in hydrophobic biolayer. The
research utilized the transferrin receptor as a target, since it is known that this receptor is
overexpressed in many types of cancer cells. Then, they associated polymeric vesicles
with transferrin (PV-Tf) in order to target cancer cells. It was possible to observe that
when native PV-Tf was used, the drug took a longer time to be released into the cell and
eventually, returned to the extracellular medium before it even released the drug. Then,
they bound PV-Tf to oxalate, because when these two are conjugated, it increases the
association of PV-Tf to the transferrin receptor, which leads to increased delivery of the
drug into the intracellular medium. Oxalate-bound PV-Tf, when absorbed by the cancer
cell, releases the drug into the intracellular environment more rapidly, being more
effective against cancer cells. The data obtained in this study may contribute to a more
effective treatment against cancer, reducing the levels of drugs in the bloodstream and,
consequently, the side effects of the treatment.