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Updated: Jan 21, 2026

Proton Therapy Delivery and Its Clinical Application in Select Solid Tumor Malignancies
Published on: February 6, 2019
Charge Regulation of Self-Assembled Tubules by Protonation for Efficiently Selective and Controlled Drug Delivery
Liping Huang1, Hang Zhang1, Shanshan Wu1
1Fine Chemical Industry Research Insitute, Key Laboratory for Polymeric Composite & Functional Materials of Ministry of Education and MOE Key Laboratory of Bioinorganic and Synthetic Chemistry Lab, School of Chemistry, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, PR China.
Abstract:
Despite the success for targeted delivery in the body, the efficient release without side effects caused by residual drug remains a challenge. For reducing residual drug, the pH-responsive carriers were prepared by self-assembly from aromatic macrocycles, which were non-toxic and biocompatible. The inner surroundings of aromatic macrocycles could be protonated positively by acid inducing the separation of neighboring macrocycles. Thus, Dox-loaded carriers successfully inhibited the proliferation of carcinoma cells (HepG2 and 4T1) rather than normal cells (HL7702). The effects were further proved in vivo without systemic cytotoxicity. Notably, the responsive environment for drug release depended on the concentration of carriers. Particularly, drug release was promoted by carrier separation. Carrier 2 exhibited preferable anticancer efficacy than carrier 1 due to the efficient release of Dox by full separation of the carrier. Collectively, we have developed a novel strategy serving as a selective and controlled drug release platform for cancer therapeutics.
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