@phdthesis{Schuessler2020,
  author    = {Sch{\"u}ßler, Lion Maximilian},
  title     = {Analyse der Wirksamkeit der SMAC Mimetics Birinapant, BV6 und LCL161 und der Zytostatika Docetaxel und Paclitaxel auf Zellen des Multiplen Myeloms},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-20897},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-208974},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2020},
  abstract  = {Die Zellen des Multiplen Myeloms (MM) zeichnen sich durch eine klonale Heterogenit{\"a}t aus, die eine kurative Therapie erschwert und zu Resistenzen gegen{\"u}ber Medikamenten f{\"u}hrt. Neue Substanzen, wie die Smac Mimetics Birinapant, BV6 und LCL161, sollen durch Nachahmung des in der Krebszelle reduziert vorkommenden Gegenspielers (SMAC/Diablo) der Apoptose-Inhibitoren (IAPs) die Apoptose der entarteten Zellen induzieren. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurde die Wirksamkeit der Smac Mimetics Birinapant, BV6 und LCL161 und der Zytostatika Docetaxel und Paclitaxel auf 10 humane MM-Zellen in vitro untersucht. Es konnte bei einigen Zelllinien ein synergetischer Effekt auf die Reduktion der Zellzahl in einer Kombinationstherapie mit den Smac Mimetics und den Zytostatika nachgewiesen und teilweise Resistenzen {\"u}berwunden werden. Weitere Forschungsarbeit zu Kombinationstherapien mit Smac Mimetics sollen deren Rolle und klinischen Nutzen in einer Therapiem{\"o}glichkeit bei rezidivierenden und refrakt{\"a}ren MM-Patienten untersuchen.},
  subject      = {Plasmozytom},
  language  = {de}
}
@phdthesis{Gruene2022,
  author    = {Gr{\"u}ne, Marvin},
  title     = {Solid-state NMR Spectroscopic, X-Ray Diffraction and Quantum Chemical Investigations of the Crystalline Cancer Drug Paclitaxel and Paclitaxel incorporated into Polymer Micelles},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-23719},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-237199},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {Paclitaxel (PTX) is one of the leading drugs against breast and ovarian cancer. Due to its low solubility, treatment of the patients with this drug requires a very well-suited combination with a soluble pharmaceutical excipient to increase the bioavailability and reduce the strong side ef-fects. One efficient way to achieve this in the future could be the incorporation of PTX into pol-ymeric micelles composed of poly(2-oxazoline) based triblock copolymers (POL) which ena-bles PTX loadings of up to 50 wt.\%. However, structural information at an atomic level and thus the knowledge of interaction sites within these promising but complex PTX-POL formula-tions were not yet available. Such results could support the future development of improved excipients for PTX and suitable excipients for other pharmaceutical drugs. Therefore, a solid-state MAS NMR investigation of these amorphous formulations with different POL-PTX com-positions was performed in this thesis as this gives insights of the local structure at an atomic level in its solid state. NMR in solution showed very broad 13C signals of PTX for this system due to the reduced mobility of the incorporated drug which exclude this as an analytical meth-od. In a first study, crystalline PTX was structurally characterized by solid-state NMR as no com-plete 13C spectrum assignment and no 1H NMR data existed for the solid state. In addition, the asymmetric unit of the PTX crystal structure consists of two molecules (Z'=2) that can only be investigated in its solid state. As crystalline PTX in total has about 100 different 13C and 1H chemical shifts with very small differences due to Z'=2, and furthermore, its unit cell consisting of more than 900 atoms, accompanying GIPAW (CASTEP) calculations were required for NMR signal assignments. These calculations were performed using the first three available purely hydrous and anhydrous PTX structures, which were determined by XRD and published by Vel-la-Zarb et al. in 2013. Within this thesis, is was discovered that two investigated batches of commercially available PTX from the same supplier both contained an identical and so far un-known PTX phase that was elucidated by PXRD as well as solid-state NMR data. One of the two batches consists of an additional phase that was shown to be very similar to a known hy-drated phase published in 2013.[1] By heating the batch with the mixture of the two phases un-der vacuum, it is transformed completely to the new dry phase occurring in both PTX batches. Since the drying conditions to obtain anhydrous PTX in-situ on the PXRD setup described by Vella-Zarb et. al.[1] were much softer than ours, we identify our dry phase as a relaxed version of their published anhydrate structure. The PXRD data of the new anhydrate phase was trans-ferred into a new structural model, which currently undergoes geometry optimization. Based on solid-state NMR data at MAS spinning frequencies up to 100 kHz, a 13C and a partial 1H signal assignment for the new anhydrous structure were achieved. These results provided sufficient structural information for further investigations of the micellar POL-PTX system. In a second study, the applicability and benefit of two-dimensional solid-state 14N-1H HMQC MAS NMR spectra for the characterization of amorphous POL-PTX formulations was investi-gated. The mentioned technique has never been applied to a system of similar complexity be-fore and was chosen because around 84\% of the small-molecule drugs contain at least one nitrogen atom. In addition, the number of nitrogen atoms in both POL and PTX is much smaller than the number of carbons or hydrogens, which significantly reduces the spectral complexity. 14N has a natural abundance of 99.6\% but leads to quadrupolar broadening due to its nuclear spin quantum number I = 1. While this is usually undesirable due to broadening in the resulting 1D 14N NMR spectra, this effect is explicitly used in the 2D 14N-1H HMQC MAS experiment. The indirect 14N measurement can avoid the broadening while maintaining the advantage of the high natural abundance and making use of the much more dispersed signals due to the additional quadrupolar shifts as compared to 15N. This measurement method could be successfully applied to the complex amorphous POL-PTX mixtures. With increasing PTX loading of the formulations, additional peaks arise as spatial proximities of the amide nitrogens of POL to NH or OH groups of PTX. In addition, the 14N quadrupolar shift of these amide nitrogens decreases with increasing PTX content indicating a more symmetric nitrogen environment. The latter can be explained by a transformation of the trigonal planar coordination of the tertiary amide nitrogen atoms in pure POL towards a more tetrahedral environment upon PTX loading induced by the formation of hydrogen bonds with NH/OH groups of PTX. In the third and last project, the results of the two abovementioned studies were used and ex-tended by solid state 13C and two-dimensional 1H-13C as well as 1H-1H MAS NMR data with the aim to derive a structural model of the POL-PTX formulations at an atomic level. The knowledge of the NMR signal assignments for crystalline PTX was transferred to amorphous PTX (present in the micelles of the formulations). The 13C solid-state NMR signals were evalu-ated concerning changes in chemical shifts and full widths of half maximum (FWHM) for the different PTX loadings. In this way, the required information about possible interaction sites at an atomic level becomes available. Due to the complexity of these systems, such proximities often cannot be assigned to special atoms, but more to groups of atoms, as the individual de-velopments of line widths and line shifts are mutually dependent. An advantageous aspect for this analysis was that pure POL already forms unloaded micelles. The evaluation of the data showed that the terminal phenyl groups of PTX seem to be most involved in the interaction by the establishment of the micelle for lowest drug loading and that they are likely to react to the change in the amount of PTX molecules as well. For the incorporation of PTX in the micelles, the following model could be obtained: For lowest drug loading, PTX is mainly located in the inner part of the micelles. Upon further increasing of the loading, it progressively extends to-ward the micellar shell. This could be well shown by the increasing interactions of the hydro-phobic butyl chain of POL and PTX, proceeding in the direction of the polymer backbone with rising drug load. Furthermore, due to the size of PTX and the hydrodynamic radius of the mi-celles, even at the lowest loading, the PTX molecules partially reach the core-shell interface of the micelle. Upon increasing the drug loading, the surface coverage with PTX clusters increas-es based on the obtained model approach. The latter result is supported by DLS and SANS data of this system. The abovementioned results of the 14N-1H HMQC MAS investigation of the POL-PTX formulations support the outlined model. As an outlook, the currently running geometry optimization and subsequently scheduled calcu-lation of the chemical shieldings of the newly obtained anhydrous PTX crystal structure can further improve the solid-state NMR characterization through determination of further spatial proximities among protons using the existing 2D 1H(DQ)-1H(SQ) solid-state MAS NMR spec-trum at 100 kHz rotor spinning frequency. The 2D 14N-1H HMQC MAS NMR experiments were shown to have great potential as a technique for the analysis of other disordered and amor-phous drug delivery systems as well. The results of this thesis should be subsequently applied to other micellar systems with varying pharmaceutical excipients or active ingredients with the goal of systematically achieving higher drug loadings (e.g., for the investigated PTX, the similar drug docetaxel or even different natural products). Additionally, it is planned to transfer the knowledge to another complex polymer system containing poly(amino acids) which offers hy-drogen bonding donor sites for additional intermolecular interactions. Currently, the POL-PTX system is investigated by further SANS studies that may provide another puzzle piece to the model as complementary measurement method in the future. In addition, the use of MD simu-lations might be considered in the future. This would allow a computerized linking of the differ-ent pieces of information with the aim to determine the most likely model.},
  subject      = {Wirkstoff-Tr{\"a}ger-System},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Herbinger2023,
  author    = {Herbinger, Anna Maria},
  title     = {Wirkungsverst{\"a}rkung von Vincristin und Paclitaxel auf Glioblastomzellen durch TTFields},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-32983},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-329836},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2023},
  abstract  = {Das Glioblastom (GBM) ist der h{\"a}ufigste maligne prim{\"a}re Hirntumor im Erwachsenenalter und geht mit einer infausten Prognose einher. Die Standardtherapie bei Erstdiagnose besteht aus Tumorresektion gefolgt von kombinierter Radiochemotherapie mit Temozolomid nach Stupp-Schema. Eine neue Therapieoption stellen die Tumor Treating Fields (TTFields) in Form lokal applizierter elektrischer Wechselfelder dar. Mit dem Einsatz der TTFields kann durch St{\"o}rung der mitotischen Abl{\"a}ufe die Zellproliferation von Tumorzellen gehemmt und dadurch das Gesamt{\"u}berleben im Vergleich zur alleinigen Radiochemotherapie nachweislich deutlich verl{\"a}ngert werden. Auch verschiedene Chemotherapeutika, die bereits klinisch eingesetzt werden, greifen in den Ablauf der Mitose ein. So auch die Zytostatika Vincristin (VIN) und Paclitaxel (PTX), die durch einen gegens{\"a}tzlichen Mechanismus durch Destabilisierung bzw. Stabilisierung von Mikrotubulistrukturen ihre Wirkung entfalten. Die Frage, ob eine Verst{\"a}rkung dieser Wirkung durch den kombinierten Einsatz mit TTFields erreicht werden kann, wurde in dieser Arbeit an den beiden GBM-Zelllinien U87 und GaMG untersucht. Zun{\"a}chst wurde mit dem xCELLigence-Systems {\"u}ber eine Real-Time-Impedanzmessung f{\"u}r diese beiden Chemotherapeutika jeweils die mittlere effektive Dosis (EC50-Wert), bei der ein halbmaximaler Effekt auftritt, spezifisch f{\"u}r jede Zelllinie bestimmt. Diese betrug bei VIN durchschnittlich 200nM f{\"u}r die Zelllinie U87 bzw. 20nM f{\"u}r die Zelllinie GaMG und lag f{\"u}r PTX bei 60nM f{\"u}r beide Zelllinien. Mit diesen Dosierungen wurden die beiden Zelllinien allein und in Kombination mit TTFields {\"u}ber 72h behandelt. Anschließend wurde die Zellproliferation analysiert und mit unbehandelten Tumorzellen verglichen. W{\"a}hrend jeder Behandlungsarm einzeln eine signifikante Wirkung gegen{\"u}ber der unbehandelten Vergleichsgruppe zeigte, hatte weder die Kombination von TTFields mit VIN noch mit PTX in den untersuchten Dosierungen einen zus{\"a}tzlichen signifikanten Nutzen. Es besteht weiterer Forschungsbedarf zum kombinierten Einsatz von TTFields mit anderen Therapieformen.},
  subject      = {Tumortherapiefelder},
  language  = {de}
}