(732a) Click-Functionalized Antibody-Nanoparticle Conjugate Drug Delivery System for Cancer Treatment

Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer patient death in this country.  Current chemotherapy treatments use combinations of passive and targeted drug delivery systems, but no such system exists which combines the two.  Chemo drugs can be encapsulated into nanosized carriers which passively target tumor cells via the EPR effect.  To take this type of passive system to being an actively targeted system we propose using copper-catalyzed azide alkyne cycloaddition to attach an anti-HER2 antibody to the surface of the particles since this chemistry is efficient, regioselective, and can be performed in the benign solvents that proteins can tolerate.  Our particles are made using fluorescent conjugated polymer blends with PLGA-PEG via nanoprecipitation.  A flow cytometer has been used to measure the fluorescence present on MCF7 breast cancer cells which have been incubated with the modified particles to confirm conjugation of the antibody to the particle and to show that the antibodies retain their biological activity post modification.  Results show that the chemistry sequence is successful in creating actively targeting particles.