Drug delivery systems that can be employed to load anticancer drugs and release them triggered by a specific stimulus, such as glutathione, are of great importance in cancer therapy. In this study, supramolecular porphysome nanovesicles that were self-assembled by amphiphilic porphyrin derivatives were successfully constructed, mainly driven by the π-π stacking, hydrogen bonding, and hydrophobic interactions, and were used as carriers of anticancer drugs. The nanovesicles are monodispersed in shape and uniform in size. The drug loading and in vitro drug release investigations indicate that these nanovesicles are able to encapsulate doxorubicin (DOX) to achieve DOX-loaded nanovesicles, and the nanovesicles could particularly release the loaded drug triggered by a high concentration of glutathione (GSH). More importantly, the drug release in cancer cells could be monitored by fluorescent recovery of the porphyrin derivative. Cytotoxicity experiments show that the DOX-loaded nanovesicles possess comparable therapeutic effect to cancer cells as free DOX. This study presents a new strategy in the fabrication of versatile anticancer drug nanocarriers with stimuli-responsive properties. Thus, the porphysome nanovesicles demonstrated here might offer an opportunity to bridge the gap between intelligent drug delivery systems and imaging-guided drug release.
Keywords: drug delivery; nanovesicles; porphyrin; self-assembly; stimuli-responsive materials.