Polymer encapsulation of anticancer silver-N-heterocyclic carbene complexes.

H A Mohamed,R M Phillips,M Khuphe,S Shepherd,C E Willans,P D Thornton,S J Boardman

doi:10.1039/c8ra00450a

Abstract

Amphiphilic block copolymers have been developed for the encapsulation of organometallic drugs. silver–N-heterocyclic carbene complexes have shown significant promise as anticancer and antibacterial compounds, and have been studied as the payload in these carriers. Simple modification of the N-heterocyclic carbene ligand structure enables solubility properties and interaction with the polymer to be tuned.

Highlights

Silver has long been established as having antibacterial properties,[1] and more recently the chemotherapeutic effects of silver have been recognised.[2,3] Silver salts, nanoparticles and compounds such as silver sulfadiazine have been used in healthcare
Silver–N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) complexes used in this study (Fig. 1) were chosen based upon their aqueous solubility (C1, C2), uorescent aSchool of Chemistry, University of Leeds, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK
Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) con rmed the production of nanoparticles (Fig. 2a) that possessed an average size of 121 nm, as determined by dynamic light scattering (DLS) (Fig. 2b)

Summary

Introduction

Silver has long been established as having antibacterial properties,[1] and more recently the chemotherapeutic effects of silver have been recognised.[2,3] Silver salts, nanoparticles and compounds such as silver sulfadiazine have been used in healthcare. A novel loading approach in which the silver–NHC complex mediates transformation of water-soluble polymers into silvercontaining nanoparticles is described and demonstrated. This is possible as many of the polymers used in this study contain functional groups capable of ionic crosslinking to yield nanoparticles. Such functional groups permit nanoparticle modi cation with cell-binding groups, an essential feature for the future development of targeted drug delivery systems

Results and discussion

P1 : C1 C3 P3 : C3 C4 P3 : C4

Conclusions