In the past decade, degradable polymeric nanocarriers such as micelles, polymersomes and nanoparticles have emerged as one of the most promising platforms for targeted and controlled drug and protein delivery. These nanoscale polymeric drug formulations have several advantages including decreased side effects, better pharmacological profiles, and/or improved drug tolerance over the current clinical approaches. It should be noted, however, that these nano drug formulations are plagued with slow and deficient intracellular drug and protein release, which has led to low therapeutic efficacy. In recent years, significant effort has been directed to the development of bioresponsive nanocarriers that are adequately stable under extracellular conditions while rapidly release drugs inside the target cancer cells. In particular, pH and reduction-sensitive nanosystems have received the most attention due to existence of a lower pH in the endo/lysosomal compartments and a high redox potential in the cytosol and cell nucleus. In this presentation, I will discuss about our recent work on design and development of pH- or reduction-sensitive degradable micelles, polymersomes and nanoparticles for active intracellular delivery of poorly soluble anti-cancer drugs, hydrophilic anti-cancer drugs, or proteins. Moreover, I will also present several novel designs of reduction and pH dual-bioresponsive degradable nanocarriers for precision intracellular drug or protein delivery.

Bioresponsive degradable polymeric nanocarriers for active intracellular drug and protein delivery

248th National Meeting (2014)

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