Design of a multicompartment hydrogel that facilitates time-resolved delivery of combination therapy and synergized killing of glioblastoma.

There is significant current interest in identifying new combination therapies that synergize to treat disease, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the temporal resolution of their administration greatly impacts efficacy. To facilitate effective delivery, a multicompartment hydrogel material was developed that is composed of spherical vesicles interlaced within a self-assembled peptide-based network of physically crosslinked fibrils that allows time-resolved independent co-delivery of small molecules. This material architecture effectively delivers the EGFR kinase inhibitor Erlotinib (ERL) and Doxorubicin (DOX, DNA intercalator) in an ERL -> DOX sequential manner to synergistically kill glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer.