Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease, which attacks human joint system and causes lifelong inflammatory condition. To date, no cure is available for RA and even the ratio of achieving remission is very low. Hence, to enhance the efficacy of RA treatment, it is essential to develop novel approaches specifically targeting pathological tissues. In this study, we discovered that RA synovial fibroblasts exhibited higher reactive oxygen species (ROS) and mitochondrial superoxide level, which were adopted to develop ROS-responsive nano-medicines in inflammatory microenvironment for enhanced RA treatment. A selenocystamine-based polymer was synthesized as a ROS-responsive carrier nanoplatform, and berberine serves as a tool drug. By assembling, ROS-responsive berberine polymeric micelles were fabricated, which remarkably increased the uptake of berberine in RA fibroblast and improved in vitro and in vivo efficacy ten times higher. Mechanistically, the anti-RA effect of micelles was blocked by the co-treatment of AMPK inhibitor or palmitic acid, indicating that the mechanism of micelles was carried out through targeting mitochondrial, suppressing lipogenesis and finally inhibiting cellular proliferation. Taken together, our ROS-responsive nano-medicines represent an effective way of preferentially releasing prodrug at the inflammatory microenvironment and improving RA therapeutic efficacy.
Keywords: Berberine; Nanoparticles; Oxygen consumption rate; Reactive oxygen species; Rheumatoid arthritis.