Background

The penetration of drugs across biological barriers is a key challenge in drug delivery. For example, existing oral or injectable drug delivery strategies targeting the brain typically demonstrate low bioavailability while anti-tumour therapies often cannot access the necrotic tumour cores, leading to frequent tumour recurrence.

Technology Overview

Researchers at McMaster have addressed this challenge by creating in situ-gelling and degradable bulk nanoparticle network hydrogels made of biocompatible functionalized polysaccharide-based nanoparticles gelled with complementary polymers. Rapid in situ crosslinking can be tuned for specific drug encapsulation and effective biological immobilization, while the tunable crosslink stability within the hydrogel can enable timed local release of ultra-small polysaccharide nanoparticles that can effectively penetrate across challenging biological barriers (e.g. into solid tumours or