Functionalizing iron oxide with genomic DNA: Materials for drug capture

Abstract

Chemotherapy agents are well known for producing severe side-effects. One approach to mitigating this offtarget damage is to deliver the chemotherapy directly to the tumor via transarterial chemoembolization, or similar procedures, and then sequestering any chemotherapeutic that enters systemic circulation. Materials capable of such drug capture have yet to be fully realized. We report the synthesis of genomic DNAfunctionalized iron oxide nanoparticles, which we used to capture three common chemotherapy agents (doxorubicin, cisplatin, and epirubicin). Drug capture was studied in biol. relevant solns. including phosphate buffered saline, human serum, and porcine whole blood. The efficacy of these nanomaterials indicates that drug capture is a viable strategy for mitigating the harmful side-effects assocd. with chemotherapy.