Hydrogels offer new hope for cancer treatment

Sumary of Hydrogels offer new hope for cancer treatment:

• Cancer therapy in recent times relies on the use of several drugs derived from biological sources including different bacteria and viruses, among others..
• Thus, effective delivery to and release of these drugs at target tumor sites are of paramount importance from the perspective of cancer therapy..
• Recently, scientists have discovered unique three-dimensional, water-containing polymers, called hydrogels, as effective drug delivery systems (DDSs)..
• Under the reducing conditions of this environment, the hydrogels degrade because of the breakage of disulfide bonds and change into low molecular-weight water-soluble oligomers that are easily excreted from the body..
• To further test their drug release properties, the scientists loaded these hydrogels with specific proteins by exploiting their temperature-dependent swelling-deswelling behavior and tested the controlled release of drugs under acidic or reducing conditions..
• It was found that the amount of drug loaded onto these hydrogels could be controlled by changing the mesh size of the hydrogel polymer network by changing temperature, suggesting the possibility of customizing these DDSs for specific drug delivery…

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From News-Medical - April 8, 2021