Metal Organic Polyhedra as New Drug Delivery Systems

Drug delivery systems (DDS) are storage technologies invented to transport pharmaceutical active compounds to a specific target. In this project, new materials (so- called metal-organic polyhedra, MOPs) are developed that will transport drugs to a specific location in the body, without collateral damage. This is particularly of interest in the treatment of cancer, where commonly used chemotherapeutics are known to cause tremendous side effects. This is mostly, since the drug is not only having an effect where it should, (in the cancer cell) but also in the healthy cells. In order to transport drugs safely, these MOPs need to possess high porosity (to load the drugs) and high surface reactivity (to facilitate functionalization). After the development of the MOPs, the active components will be incorporated through different methods, covering different release mechanisms. Furthermore, control on solubility, drug release and the location in the body will be pursued through installation of molecules of interest on the periphery of the MOPs using post-functionalization. Overall, the main task in the MOPs-as-DDS project is to develop a drug delivery system for the treatment of lung cancer. On this basis, the findings will possess the potential to have a great impact, particularly when considering the need for new, innovative and well characterized materials.

This project called "Metal Organic Polyhedra as New Drug Delivery Systems (Acronym: MOP-as-DDS)" demonstrated that Rh(II)-based Metal-Organic Polyhedra (MOPs) can become a novel multifunctional platform to develop new drug delivery systems (DDS). MOPs can be considered as the ultimate strategy to shrink porous metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) down to the sub-10-nm scale. As such, they are still highly porous, can encapsulate drugs, and the size of their internal cavities can still be modulated by means of reticular chemistry. MOPs can also be seen as giant molecules or nanoparticles (NPs), so they also combine solubility in aqueous conditions with a large outer surface area that can be post-synthetically functionalized with stoichiometric control. We exploited all these properties to design novel MOP-based systems.