POM formulation offers pH-responsive targeted colon delivery
POMs are metal-oxygen cluster compounds that are cheaper and easier to synthesise than small molecules. Despite these benefits, and POM’s effectiveness against an array of ailments including HIV and lung cancer, difficulties in stabilising the compounds and delivering them to specific regions has restricted usage.
However, research published in Dalton Transactions suggests that attaching a POM to mesoporous silica sphereswith a dative bond creates a stable formulation that could be used for drug delivery.
The dative bond was unaffected by acidic or neutral conditions, which would be experienced on an oral drugs transit through the body, and the POM remained attached to the silica spheres.
However, when put in a basic environment, such as the one found in the colon, the dative bond breaks and the POM is released. This pH-responsive release has led the researchers to speculate that the technique could be used in the treatment of colon cancer.
Others have attempted to use the change in pH as a trigger for targeted release, such as Cosmo Pharmaceuticals that filed a patent for its MMX technology.
However, the researchers believe their technique could be used to deliver various drugs containing transition metal.
These include compounds already in clinical use, such as cisplatin, carboplatin and oxaliplatin, that may be more effective than the POM used by the researchers, which only “showed modest antitumoural activity”.
The full research paper can be found here.
