A new biosafe reactive oxygen species (ROS)-responsive nanoplatform for drug delivery

Abstract

A new ROS-cleavable diblock copolymer (Meo-PEG-TK-PLGA) was designed and prepared. This polymer can self-assemble into small-sized (<100 nm) nanoparticles (NPs), with hydrophilic PEG shells and hydrophobic PLGA cores. This new nanoplatform shows high stability, satisfactory drug loading ability, excellent ROS sensitivity and good compatibility resulting from the use of FDA-approved PEG and PLGA. When using these new NPs to load the anticancer drug doxorubicin (DOX) and incubate with oral cancer cell line (Cal27 cells), the NPs can efficiently escape from endosomes and enter into the cytoplasm. With the presence of intracelluar ROS to cleave TK-containing linker, the loaded DOX could be rapidly released and induce the apoptosis of Cal27 cells. The polymer presents great potential as a novel drug delivery platform for cancer chemotherapy.