Date of Award

8-31-2017

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Applied Science

First Advisor

Alexandru Biris

Abstract

In the United States, breast cancer is one of the most frequently occurring and deadly cancers. Though various therapies have seen success, they have numerous negative side effects. The incorporation of nanomaterials with anticancer drugs could help avoid these side effects and enhance the drugs’ effects. Nanomaterials have many properties, such as size, shape, structure, morphology, and surface features, that can be precisely tuned by altering their chemical composition. In this work, we explored the use of graphene and gold nanorods to enhance drug localization in and destruction of cancer cells by targeted delivery of the drugs doxorubicin (Dox) and docetaxel (Doc) alone, together, and under ultraviolet (UV) light irradiation. First, we used a carbon-based nanomaterial, highly oxidized graphene (HOG), functionalized with anti-EpCAM (anti-epithelial cell adhesion molecule) to deliver Dox in MCF-7 breast cancer cells, with and without UV light irradiation. The results showed significantly decreased cell viability compared to treatment with free Dox, HOG-Dox, and HOG-Dox-EpCAM alone, suggesting that anti-EpCAM-conjugated, Dox-loaded HOG has great potential for actively targeted drug delivery with controlled UV irradiation. In our second project, we used silver-coated gold nanorods functionalized with anti-EpCAM and anti-CD-44 to deliver a combination of Dox and Doc in MCF-7 and SKBR-3 breast cancer cell lines. This treatment showed a significantly higher killing rate than non-targeted, drug-loaded nanorods and free drugs. The results suggest that our nanosystems are ideal for delivering a combination of anticancer drugs intracellularly while possibly reducing toxicity to healthy cells.

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