Physicochemical Characterization of two Cationic Copolymers Effective on Etoposide-Sensitive and Resistant Neuroblastoma Cells

New therapeutic agents as antibiotics and chemotherapeutics capable of inducing cytotoxic effects and employed in the treatment of lethal human diseases as cancer and infections need also to circumvent the increasing chemoresistance, which limits their action. Natural and synthetic cationic peptides and polymers have given appealing results both in microbiology, and in the oncological field, where they resulted effective against several tumors, including human neuroblastoma (NB) [1,2]. To this end, we recently synthetized two polystyrene-based cationic copolymers (P5 and P7), which proved a potent ROS-related cytotoxicity against both etoposide-sensitive (HTLA-230) and -resistant (HTLA-ER) NB cells [3]. Interestingly, the cytotoxic effects of P5 and P7 were even higher on HTLA-ER cells, thus proving that they could be promising template macromolecules for the development of new chemotherapeutic agents able to fight NB chemoresistance.Water-solubility, surface charge, protonation profile in the physiological pH range, Z-potential, polydispersity index, buffer capacity, and particles size are pivotal features for the feasibility of biomedical application of new bioactive macromolecules. In our poster, in addition to show the spectroscopic characterization of P5 and P7, we have reported their complete physicochemical characterization. [1] L.T. Eliassen, et al. Int. J. Cancer. 2006, 119, 493–500. [2] J. Tan, et al. Biomat. 2020, 252, 120078. [3] S. Alfei, et al. Nanomaterials 2021, 11, 977.