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Updated: Aug 11, 2025
Solubility of Hydrophobic Compounds in Aqueous Solution Using Combinations of Self-assembling Peptide and Amino Acid
Published on: September 20, 2017
Improving solubility of poorly water-soluble drugs by protein-based strategy: A review
Xiaowen Liu1, Limin Zhao1, Baojian Wu2
1Engineering Center of Catalysis and Synthesis for Chiral Molecules, Department of Chemistry, Fudan University, 220 Handan Road, Shanghai 200433, China; Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Industrial Asymmetric Catalysis of Chiral Drugs, 220 Handan Road, Shanghai 200433, China.
Abstract:
Poorly water-soluble drugs are frequently encountered and present a most challengeable difficulty in pharmaceutical development. Poor solubility of drugs can lead to suboptimal bioavailability and therapeutic efficiency. Increasing efforts have been contributed to improve the solubility of poorly water-soluble drugs for better pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. Among various solubility enhancement technologies, protein-based strategy to address poorly water-soluble drugs issues has special interests for natural advantages including versatile interactions between proteins and hydrophobic drugs, biocompatibility, biodegradation, and metabolization of proteins. The protein-drug formulations could be formed by covalent conjugations or noncovalent interactions to facilitate solubility of poorly water-soluble drugs. This review is to summarize the advances using proteins including plant proteins, mammalian proteins, and recombinant proteins, to enhance water solubility of poorly water-soluble drugs.
