Transport of Ionic Chemotherapy Drugs in Charged Biosponge Block Copolymers

Cancer is the leading cause of death in most developed nations. Despite the effort to develop targeted and personalized chemotherapy drugs, the dosing of drugs is limited by toxic side effects. More than 90% of the injected chemotherapy drug is not trapped by a target organ, goes to the heart, and circulates throughout the body. In the context of reducing chemotherapy toxicities, we have designed biosponge adsorbers that can selectively bind to target ionic chemotherapy drugs. In this work, we aim to understand the governing transport mechanism of ionic chemotherapy drugs in charged nanostructured block copolymer membranes with different ion-exchange capacities (IECs) and equilibrium water swelling. Sulfonated styrenic pentablock copolymers are used as a model polymer, and doxorubicin (dox) is used as a model chemotherapy drug. We performed a cycle of drug sorption/desorption experiments to quantify the amount of free-dox and bound-dox in the sulfonated polymer membranes. Upon this work, we aim to understand the design principles of charged biosponge block copolymers for different ionic chemotherapy drugs. Designing highly selective biosponge polymer adsorbers can effectively remove untrapped chemotherapy drugs in the body, and thus, can help patients fight cancer.