In vitro and in vivo evaluation of lipidic nanosystems for cancer therapy

Resumo

Since the FDA-approval of the first nanomedicines, the development of innovative therapeutic approaches based on nanotechnology has been continuously growing in the biomedical area. In the field of cancer, novel therapeutic strategies are urgently need, and nanomedicine can strongly contribute to respond to this demand. It is also necessary to improve the translation of novel nanomedicines by implementing preclinical tools that that mimics efficiently the tumor structure for a correct evaluation of the therapy and allow a better understanding of their efficacy and toxicity prior testing in advanced models of the disease. In this sense, the main objective of this thesis is the use of advanced in vitro and alternative in vivo models, for the preclinical study of previously developed sphingomyelin nanoemulsions for cancer treatment. Overall, this thesis proves the versatility of sphingomyelin nanosystems for being loaded with different types of therapeutic molecules and decorated with specific ligands for cancer treatment, and, importantly, the critical role of 3D in vitro models, static and non-static, and zebrafish embryos, to evaluate the behavior and efficacy of cancer