Cancer is one of the leading causes of deaths worldwide. Current first-line treatments using cytotoxic agents such as doxorubicin, paclitaxel and cisplatin have caused patients to suffer from severe side-effects and damages the healthy organs/tissues as a result of the biodistribution process. In addition, the multidrug resistance also causes the cancer to relapse and result in treatment failure.
As a natural polyphenol isolated from the spice turmeric (Curcuma Longa), curcumin is able to modulate over 100 signaling pathways, acting as both an anti-cancer agent and a chemosensitizer for resistance reversal. Curcumin has been listed by the Food and Drug Administration of United States (FDA) under Generally Regarded as Safe (GRAS) category. Its safety, tolerability and nontoxicity at high doses in human studies have also been well recognized. However, its clinical application has been limited due to the low bioavailability arising from its poor absorption, rapid metabolism and systemic elimination. Due to the extreme physicochemical properties of curcumin, the traditional formulation approaches are hard to deliver this problematic agent.
In collaboration with Professor Deling Kong at Nankai University, Professor Zheng Wang and Dr. Yanjun Zhao from the School of Pharmaceutical Science & Technology at Tianjin University designed and produced a series of stimuli-responsive polymer-curcumin conjugate micellar nanocarriers. These micelles could avoid premature drug release and realize on-demand drug liberation upon cellular uptake. The researchers also revealed the influence of conjugate architecture on the delivery performance of nanocarriers. Such micellar nanocarriers show the potential as a “universal” nanoplatform for co-deliver multiple active agents for synergistic action and reduction of the side-effects in terms of cancer chemotherapy.
The article has been published in the following journals:
[1] European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics, Volume 90, February 2015, Pages 53–62 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0939641114003191)
[2] IOPPublishing Nanotechnology 26 (2015) 115101 (9pp) (http://iopscience.iop.org/0957-4484/26/11/115101)
This research was supported by the State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemistry, National Natural Science Foundation of China, as well as Tianjin Science and Technology Commission.
For more information, please contact Prof. WANG (wangzheng2006@tju.edu.cn) or Dr. ZHAO (zhaoyj@tju.edu.cn).
