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Published on: April 30, 2019
H-gemcitabine: a new gemcitabine prodrug for treating cancer
Madhuri Dasari1, Abhinav P Acharya, Dongin Kim
1Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, 315 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA.
Abstract:
In this report, we present a new strategy for targeting chemotherapeutics to tumors, based on targeting extracellular DNA. A gemcitabine prodrug was synthesized, termed H-gemcitabine, which is composed of Hoechst conjugated to gemcitabine. H-gemcitabine has low toxicity because it is membrane-impermeable; however, it still has high tumor efficacy because of its ability to target gemcitabine to E-DNA in tumors. We demonstrate here that H-gemcitabine has a wider therapeutic window than free gemcitabine.
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