Optimising the drug loading of hyperbranched polymer micelles by unlocking thermodynamic and kinetic controls

Emerging chemotherapy treatments can eliminate the need for surgery, but the occurrence of side effects limits the drug dosage that can be safely used, often causing chemotherapy to fail. Nano-encapsulating chemotherapy drugs reduces the harm to healthy cells, increases the efficacy of anti-tumour activity and prolongs the half-life of the medicine whilst it circulates in the blood stream. This project aims to establish the design rules for scalably loading an emerging class of nanocarrier, hyperbranched polymers, with drugs. Maximising the drug loaded into each nanocarrier requires an understanding of the thermodynamic interactions between the drug, solvent and non-solvent as well as the ability to control the kinetics of processing. This study will track the evolution of the phases and structure of nanocarriers during encapsulation to quantify the processing kinetics. These data will be used to optimise the tradeoff between high drug loading and a scalable process.