Publication Date

Spring 2011

Document Type

Project Summary

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Analytical Chemistry

First Advisor

Walter Henne, Jr., Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Stephen Kent, M.B.A.

Third Advisor

Patty Fu-Giles, Ph.D.

Abstract

Cancer is the second leading cause of death despite the anti cancer developments including hormone therapy, radiotherapy, chemotherapy. Chemotherapy includes use of potent drugs such as camptothecin, paclitaxel and mitomycin. These drugs have an effect which is dose responsive, where the drug exposure and cell kill are proportional. This chemotherapy is high dose and has less selectivity for cancer cells and has more toxic effect to normal cells. Such kind of non specific treatment to tumor is causing hurdles in the treatment of cancer by chemotherapy. To overcome this current limitation to chemotherapy, the anti cancer drug with high specificity is given in concentration effective to the tumor tissues. In order to achieve this goal, tumor selective drugs were developed by conjugating antibodies, hormones and vitamin derivatives to anti cancer drugs. One such compound, folic acid, which is low molecular weight vitamin, has emerged as ligand for delivery of drugs to cancer tissues. Since the folate receptors are over expressed in cancer cells, conjugation of anticancer drugs with folate serves as a highly effective way to treat cancer with fewer side effects. This way, the normal cells can be prevented from the toxic effects of the anticancer drugs. Hence, folate receptors can be used as a useful tool for selective targeting of drugs.

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