Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics

Despite active research in the field of targeted drug delivery, there remains the problem of poor solubility of chemotherapeutic agents in water, which leads to low efficiency of drug loading, which requires an increase in its dose, resulting in high toxicity. One way to solve this problem is to use cyclodextrins - cyclic oligosaccharides containing six (α-cyclodextrin), seven (β-cyclodextrin) or eight (γ-cyclodextrin) (α-1,4-) linked units of D-glucopyranose, consisting of a hydrophobic inner cavity and a hydrophilic outer part, which allows them to bind hydrophobic drugs in their cavity with non-covalent bonds. The presence of cyclodextrins in nanoparticles can increase the solubility and bioavailability of drugs, improve stability and reduce the side effects of nanoparticles. This project is aimed at solving the problem of developing effective nanosystems for drug delivery by exploring the potential of new molecular tools based on cyclodextrin conjugates with phospholipid, capable of self-assembling into nanoparticles with low toxicity and high encapsulation efficiency and bioavailability of poorly soluble medicinal compounds, as well as capable of modifying the surface of other nanoparticles to give them biocompatibility and/or the ability to transfer drugs. The main objective of the project is to deepen knowledge about guest-host interactions by studying the structure of the resulting cyclodextrin complexes with the hydrophobic drug paclitaxel and its effect on the stability of complexes at the molecular level, which can be achieved by applying an approach based on a combination of experimental methods with molecular modeling. As a result, light will be shed on the molecular mechanisms that provide multiple improvements in the characteristics of nanoparticles designed to deliver hydrophobic drugs, observed in experiments at a higher level of organization