• cancer therapy
• chemotherapy
• drug delivery
• metal complex
• nanomedicine
• nanotechnology

The aim of this thesis is the development of nano-architectures loaded with metal complexes for the potential co-chemo treatment of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). HNSCC is a complex group of malignancies that affect different body sites pertaining to the oral cavity and is one of the most common cancer types. The modular nano-architectures exploited in this work have demonstrated a number of intriguing features in oncological research, among which the ability to avoid the issue of metal persistence due to the fast biodegradation to renal clearable building blocks. Two chemotherapeutic drugs were investigated – conventional cisplatin and an emerging ruthenium complex – in order to assess their synergistic activity. A review of existing literature on head and neck cancer, the role of ruthenium complexes in cancer treatment, and nanoparticle-associated treatment approaches is provided as introduction. The experimental work is aimed at optimizing the production of drug-loaded nano-architectures as well as at characterizing the final products by electron microscopy, spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. The results of the biological assays on biomodels with increasing complexity, all based on a HNSCC cell line, are also discussed. Overall, the nano-architectures synthetized in this thesis work possess appreciable features as drug delivery agents and demonstrated an interesting synergistic activity in preclinical biomodels.