Nano-Mesosphere Drug Carriers for Localized Cancer Chemotherapy

The therapeutic activity of most cancer drugs is dose dependant. Systemic toxicity prevents the use of aggressive high dose chemotherapy. There is a great need for more efficient localized and nonsystemic drug delivery. Reported here is research devoted to the synthesis, properties, and therapeutic evaluation of drug loaded nano-mesospheres (meso-MS) designed for administration as aqueous dispersions by local intratumoral (IT) injection. Clinically practical compositions have been synthesized using mitoxantrone (MXN) with biodegradable proteins (i.e. albumin, collagen, casein) or with deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) as the meso-MS matrix. In vivo IT studies in a murine mammary adenocarcinoma demonstrated greatly prolonged survival (>500%) with no systemic toxicity at MS-loaded drug concentrations more than 6x the toxic dose for systemic drug delivery.