ELUSUB

Cytotoxic anticancer drugs cannot be administered by the subcutaneous (SC) route due to the risk of inducing tissue irritation/necrosis. This is a loss for patient intake as SC is a simpler and faster route of administration than the traditional intravenous (IV) injection. Indeed, SC is commonly used for insulin for diabetic patients or for vaccines. We have developed a polymer prodrug approach to eliminate the local toxicity at the SC injection site of paclitaxel (PTX) as a model vesicant anticancer drug. To our knowledge it is the first time that a safe SC administration of PTX has been described. We have generated in vivo data demonstrating the efficacy of our approach and its superiority in comparison with the IV administration of Taxol. The aim of this project is to: understand what is happening in the SC tissue after drug/prodrug injection, and evaluate the fate of the polymer prodrug after administration. These aspects are essential to ensure a good translation to the clinic.