Compared to normal healthy cells, cancer cells adopt a unique metabolism pathway to use glucose, in which, less ATP is produced with lactic acid being the major byproduct, creating an acidic microenvironment with pH value in the range of 6.5 – 7.0. For years, academic and industries have been attempted to take advantage of the tumor’s unique acidic microenvironment for tumor-specific drug delivery. Unfortunately, despite of numerous efforts, limited success has been achieved. One major reason is that the current technology, such as acetal and ketal chemistry, is not sufficiently sensitive to the acid-catalyzed hydrolysis. Recently, we developed a highly pH-responsive, sugar-based polymer---sugar poly(orthoester), which is orders of magnitude more sensitive to acidolysis. Herein we demonstrated that when such a polymer is used (to construct a delivery system), enhanced tumor-specific delivery is achieved. For example, in a breast cancer-bearing mice model, the new delivery system was able to increase the drug deposition on the tumors by nearly 2.5 folds, compared to the currently clinically used Taxol<sup>®</sup> formulation.

Enhance tumor-specific drug delivery through pH-responsive sugar polymer

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.