Self-Assembly of a Linear-Dendritic Polymer Containing Cisplatin and Norcantharidin into Raspberry-like Multimicelle Clusters for the Efficient Chemotherapy of Liver Cancer

Mingli Wei; Ying Jiang; Rong Sun; Liangyi Fang; Chenxiao Chu; Haibing He; Jingxin Gou; Tian Yin; Yongbo Song; Xing Tang; Fan Zhao; Yinglei Zhai; Yu Zhang

doi:10.1021/acsami.2c21529

Self-Assembly of a Linear-Dendritic Polymer Containing Cisplatin and Norcantharidin into Raspberry-like Multimicelle Clusters for the Efficient Chemotherapy of Liver Cancer

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2023 Mar 7. doi: 10.1021/acsami.2c21529. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Mingli Wei¹, Ying Jiang¹, Rong Sun¹, Liangyi Fang², Chenxiao Chu¹, Haibing He¹, Jingxin Gou¹, Tian Yin³, Yongbo Song², Xing Tang¹, Fan Zhao², Yinglei Zhai⁴, Yu Zhang¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmacy, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, China.
² School of Life Science and Bio-Pharmaceutics, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, China.
³ School of Functional Food and Wine, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, China.
⁴ Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Medical Devices, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang 110016, China.

PMID: 36882938
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.2c21529

Abstract

Combination chemotherapy has been proved to be an effective strategy in the clinic, and nanoformulations have drawn much attention in the field of drug delivery. However, conventional nanocarriers suffer from shortcomings such as inefficient coloading and undesired molar ratios of the combined drugs, preleakage of cargos during systemic circulation, and lack of cancer-selective drug release. To achieve tumor-specific codelivery of cisplatin (CDDP) and norcantharidin (NCTD) for synergistic treatment of liver cancer, a novel linear-dendritic polymer, termed as G1(PPDC)_x, was designed and synthesized, where a prodrug consisting of cisplatin (CDDP) and norcantharidin (NCTD) was conjugated to PEG2000 via ester bonds to fabricate linear polymer-drug conjugates, and the conjugates were subsequently grafted to the terminal hydroxyls of a dendritic polycarbonate core. Benefiting from the hydrogen bond interactions, G1(PPDC)_x could spontaneously self-assemble into a unique type of raspberry-like multimicelle clusters in solution (G1(PPDC)_x-PMs). G1(PPDC)_x-PMs possessed an optimal synergistic ratio of CDDP and NCTD, without obvious premature release or disassembly in biological environments. Intriguingly, upon extravasation into the interstitial tumor tissues, G1(PPDC)_x-PMs (132 nm in diameter) could disassemble and reassemble into smaller micelles (40 nm in diameter) in response to the mildly acidic tumor microenvironment, which would enhance the deep tumor penetration and cellular accumulation of drugs. In vivo delivery of G1(PPDC)_x-PMs led to a significantly prolonged blood circulation half-life, which is beneficial to achieve sufficient tumor accumulation through the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect. G1(PPDC)_x-PMs displayed the best antitumor activity in H22 tumor-bearing mice with a tumor inhibition rate of 78.87%. Meanwhile, G1(PPDC)_x-PMs alleviated both myelosuppression toxicities of CDDP and vascular irritation of NCTD. Our results demonstrated that G1(PPDC)_x-PMs could serve as an effective drug delivery system for codelivery of CDDP and NCTD to treat liver cancer efficiently.

Keywords: cisplatin; myelosuppression; norcantharidin; penetration; raspberry-like multimicelle clusters.