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Updated: Jan 26, 2026

A Facile and Efficient Approach for the Production of Reversible Disulfide Cross-linked Micelles
Published on: December 23, 2016
Facile Preparation of Reduction-Responsive Micelles Based on Biodegradable Amphiphilic Polyurethane with Disulfide
Peng Zhang1,2, Jiaying Hu3,4, Leran Bu5
1School of Chemistry & Materials Science, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Green Synthetic Chemistry for Functional Materials, Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou 221116, China. zhangpeng@jsnu.edu.cn.
Abstract:
In this paper, we synthesized a biodegradable amphiphilic polymer of polyurethane-polyethylene glycol with disulfide bonds in the main chain (PEG-PU(SS)-PEG). DLS and SEM showed that the polymer could self-assemble into micelles in aqueous solution and could be used to load the hydrophobic anticancer drug DOX. Intriguingly, drug release in vitro indicated that DOX-loaded PEG-PU(SS)-PEG micelles had good stability under the extracellular physiological environment, but the disulfide bonds broke rapidly and DOX was released quickly under the intracellular reducing conditions. CCK-8 assays showed that DOX-loaded PEG-PU(SS)-PEG micelles had a high in vitro antitumor activity in C6 cells, whereas blank PEG-PU(SS)-PEG micelles were nontoxic to C6 cells. It was also found that there was strong and persistent accumulation of DOX-loaded PEG-PU(SS)-PEG as compared with PEG-PU-PEG both by the cell internalization tests and the flow cytometry measurements. Hence, PEG-PU(SS)-PEG micelles will have a potential use for clinical treatment of cancer in the future.
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