A Novel Solubility-Enhanced Rubusoside-Based Micelles for Increased Cancer Therapy
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Updated: Sep 22, 2026

Preparation and Characterization of Individual and Multi-drug Loaded Physically Entrapped Polymeric Micelles
Published on: August 28, 2015
Meiying Zhang1, Tongcheng Dai1,2,3, Nianping Feng4
1Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, 1200 Cailun Road, Pudong New District, Shanghai, 201203, China.
Abstract:
Many anti-cancer drugs have a common problem of poor solubility. Increasing the solubility of the drugs is very important for its clinical applications. In the present study, we revealed that the solubility of insoluble drugs was significantly enhanced by adding rubusoside (RUB). Further, it was demonstrated that RUB could form micelles, which was well characterized by Langmuir monolayer investigation, transmission electron microscopy, atomic-force microscopy, and cryogenic transmission electron microscopy. The RUB micelles were ellipsoid with the horizontal distance of ~25 nm and vertical distance of ~1.2 nm. Insoluble synergistic anti-cancer drugs including curcumin and resveratrol were loaded in RUB to form anti-cancer micelles RUB/CUR + RES. MTT assay showed that RUB/CUR + RES micelles had more significant toxicity on MCF-7 cells compared to RUB/CUR micelles + RUB/RES micelles. More importantly, it was confirmed that RUB could load other two insoluble drugs together for remarkably enhanced anti-cancer effect compared to that of RUB/one drug + RUB/another drug. Overall, we concluded that RUB-based micelles could efficiently load insoluble drugs for enhanced anti-cancer effect.
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