Polymeric prodrug for release of an antitumoral agent by specific enzymes

The clinical usefulness of antitumor chemotherapy has been strongly limited by the lack of specificity of most anticancer drugs, which act also against healthy cells. The aim of this work was to design, synthesize, and evaluate a macromolecular prodrug of Cytarabine, a known antitumor drug, which is a specific substrate for plasmin enzyme whose concentration is high in various kinds of tumor mass as a result of plasminogen activator secretion. alpha,beta-Poly(N-hydroxyethyl)-DL-aspartamide (PHEA), a known synthetic and biocompatible polyamino acid, was used as a drug carrier, and Cytarabine was linked to PHEA by D-Val-Leu-Lys spacer synthesized beginning from Cbz-D-Val-LeuOH dipeptide and N6-CbzLys methyl ester. The content of Cytarabine in the purified PHEA-D-Val-Leu-Lys-Cytarabine conjugate was equal to 3% w/w. In vitro experiments in the presence of plasmin evidenced the ability of this enzyme to strongly increase drug release from the macromolecular prodrug, as well as plasma incubation shows high stability of drug-polymer linkage. The direct linkage of Cytarabine to PHEA was also performed and, like PHEA-D-Val-Leu-Lys-Cytarabine conjugate, the obtained PHEA-Cytarabine conjugate showed high stability in plasma, but no release of Cytarabine was revealed in the presence of plasmin.