(147g) Transport and Reaction Modeling of Liposomal Nanocarriers for Chemotherapeutics in Solid Tumor Analogues

Liposomal carriers have been successfully used for many years in chemotherapy of solid tumors in order to improve delivery of different chemotherapeutic drugs. Currently, ligand-labeled liposomes for targeted chemotherapy are evaluated on clinical trials which suggest promising potential. Liposomes' usage has both increased the killing efficacy of the drug within the tumor, and reduced its uptake by the healthy tissues. The most advanced of these liposomes can be equipped with masking/unmasking mechanisms of specific ligands and/or triggered release of their contents - affected by the pH gradients within these solid tumors - which can further improve their performance. Despite the advanced state of experimental research in this field, there is still the need to develop a general and consistent mathematical model, which can accurately predict the drug delivery efficiency of liposomal carriers (and any other type of nanoparticle) in diverse situations, thus allowing the optimization of their features. In this communication we present such a theoretical model, we discuss its origin and range of validity, and we show results from numerical simulations.