Design of Polylactones for Drug Delivery

Cancer is one of the major causes of death worldwide and has motivated researchers to look for better and more promising treatments than surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. The use of chemo and radiation therapy have many side effects, as these treatments not only kill the cancer cells, but also healthy ones. Also, most of the anticancer drugs have short half-life as well as are hydrophobic in nature. In general, we are in need of a targeted as well as controlled drug delivery device. There are a number of devices in use for the treatment of cancer. One of these is the use of polymer nanoparticles as polymer micelles (10 nm – 100 nm) for loading of the anticancer drugs, as well as the release of drugs at tumor sites, confirmed by in vitro studies done by our lab. We have synthesized a number of substituted caprolactone monomers at different positions with different kinds of substituents by using multi-step organic synthesis in the direction of a more efficient delivery device. The main aim of my thesis is to discuss the synthesis of γ-substituted caprolactone monomers. Chapter 1 introduces functional polylactones, more specifically polycaprolactones with different kind of substituents at different positions such as γ-, α-, or ε-position and about its importance as compared to unsubstituted polycaprolactones. These are one of the attractive drug delivery agents due to their biocompatible as well as biodegradable properties which are advantageous to developing a material for the cure of cancer. Chapter 2 presents the experimental methods used for the synthesis of different functional (such as acid group or other with ester group) γ-substituted caprolactone monomers. Chapter 3 discusses the results of γ-substituted caprolactone monomers and the different characterization techniques such as 1H NMR, 13C NMR, 2-D NMR and FT-IR techniques used for the analysis of functional γ-substituted caprolactone monomers having different functional groups such as acid or ester groups. Chapter 4 explains the analysis of the results of γ-substituted caprolactone monomers or discussion of the γ-substituted caprolactone monomers. Chapter 5 is the conclusion of the synthesis of γ-substituted caprolactone monomers.