Research Projects

Thiolated polymers (thiomers) are emerging as a new class of material for mucoadhesive drug delivery systems due to their high affinity towards mucosal membranes. These membranes are found in various parts of the human body, such as the ocular, buccal, nasal, rectal, pulmonary, vaginal, and gastrointestinal tract. Mucoadhesive polymers offer advantages such as target localization, extended dosage form residence time, increased drug bioavailability, and less frequent dosing. Thiomeric micelles have gained significant attention for their ability to deliver poorly water-soluble drugs to the targeted site. The research on mucoadhesive thiomeric micelles is still in its infancy, and further improvements are needed for successful delivery of hydrophobic drugs. The proposed proposal is to synthesize bile acid-based stimuli-responsive thiolated multiarm star block copolymer micelles for mucoadhesive drug delivery applications. Bile acids, naturally occurring steroidal detergents in mammals, have unique physicochemical properties such as facial amphiphilicity, structural rigidity, enantiomeric purity, and easy availability. These micelles create a less densely packed internal reservoir than conventional polymeric micelles, allowing for a more significant amount of drug molecules. Fluorescent Ag or Au nanoclusters embedded in thiomeric micelles will be synthesized in situ reduction method, resulting in size-tunable emission properties from UV to NIR region. These nanoclusters have emerged as promising fluorescent probes in biomedical imaging due to their excellent photostability, large stokes shifts, and low biotoxicity compared to conventional fluorophores. The major goal of this proposal is to design bile acid-based mucoadhesive and stimuli-responsive thiomeric micelles-templated fluorescent Ag/Au NCs for simultaneous drug delivery and bioimaging of cancer cells.