Boron-rich drug-delivery vehicles for BNCT: Self-assembled vesicles, unimolecular nanoparticles, and liposomes

Boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) is a binary cancer treatment based on the propensity of the boron nucleus to absorb thermal neutrons and subsequently fission to high energy particles. This dissertation documents the design of drug-delivery systems to selectively deliver high concentrations of boron to tumor tissue, a crucial demand of the BNCT strategy. The systems so designed were based in part on the documented property of spherical phospholipid vesicles (lipsomes) to accumulate preferentially in tumor. The explored systems included self-assembled vesicles from carborane-containing surfactants and boron-rich unimolecular nanoparticle closomers (relatives of dendrimers), as well as modifications to liposomes themselves. Successful synthesis of these boron-rich delivery platforms was followed by complete characterization and, when possible, by in vivo evaluation for efficacy using tumor-bearing mice.