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A Facile and Efficient Approach for the Production of Reversible Disulfide Cross-linked Micelles
Published on: December 23, 2016
Well-defined labile diselenide-centered poly(ε-caprolactone)-based micelles for activated intracellular drug release
1Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Materials and Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, 200237, China. zhang_yan@ecust.edu.cn mdlang@ecust.edu.cn.
Abstract:
Well-defined diselenide-centered biodegradable tri-block copolymers methoxyl poly(ethylene glycol)-b-poly(ε-caprolactone)-b-methoxyl poly(ethylene glycol) (mPEG-PCL-Se)2 were precisely synthesized by the combination of ring opening polymerization using di(1-hydroxyethylene) diselenide as a new initiator and a facile coupling reaction. The amphiphilic block copolymers enabled the formation of self-assembled micelles which revealed an excellent reductive response to glutathione (GSH) due to the unique reduction-responsive cleavage of the diselenide bond. Such GSH response ensured an enhanced release of anticancer drugs (DOX) from the micelles in simulative tumor microenvironments; moreover, the drug release could be changed to some extent through fine-tuning the chemical composition of the copolymers. Flow cytometry and confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) measurements confirmed that the DOX-loaded micelles could be efficiently taken up by oral squamous carcinoma (HN30) cells and DOX was released into the nuclei of cancer cells following 4 h of incubation. The cell viability assays showed the diselenide-containing polymers were nontoxic up to a tested concentration (400 μg mL-1), while the DOX-loaded micelles exhibited an evident inhibition toward HN30 cells. Therefore, the reduction-labile biodegradable (mPEG-PCL-Se)2 may offer an alternative platform for tumor-targeting therapy.
