The delivery of nanoparticles such as micelles and liposomes into solid tumor is a major issue to improve the antitumor activity in cancer treatment. To improve the delivery efficiency, introducing poly ethylene glycol (PEG) onto nanoparticles has been generally adapted to enhance the structural stability in vivo due to the non-recognition properties (stealth effect) of the PEGylated surface with respect to biopolymers such as plasma proteins. In this strategy, the PEG density in the particle shell would be dominant the stealth effect, which has been debated for years. However, the discussion has mainly been based on the PEGylated micelles which is a self-assembly system with weak interactions and no guarantee of maintaining the structure in vivo. In this study, we prepared PEGylated core cross-linked nanoparticles whose PEG molecular weights were varied by 1.0, 2.0, and 5.0 kDa. We characterized the nanoparticles using small angle X-ray scattering and light scattering measurements and found that the PEG density depended on their molecular weight. We confirmed the high structural stability of the nanoparticle in vivo compared to that of PEGylated micelles. We will discuss the effect of PEG molecular weight on the nanoparticle fate in vivo in the presentation.

Effect of PEG molecular weight on the in vivo fate of PEGylated core cross-linked nanoparticles

ACS Spring 2022

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