Glutathione-Sensitive Hyaluronic Acid-Mercaptopurine Prodrug Linked via Carbonyl Vinyl Sulfide: A Robust and CD44-Targeted Nanomedicine for Leukemia
Biomedical Polymers Laboratory, and Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Functional Polymer Design and Application, College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, P. R. China
Biomacromolecules, 2017, 18 (10), 3207--3214
6-Mercaptopurine (6-MP) is an essential medicine used for treating leukemia in the clinics. 6-MP suffers, however, from poor water solubility, low bioavailability, and significant side effects. Here, we designed CD44-targeted glutathione-sensitive hyaluronic acid-mercaptopurine prodrug (HA-GS-MP) linked via carbonyl vinyl sulfide for safer and enhanced treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). HA-GS-MP obtained with 50 kDa HA and 6-MP conjugation content of 6.9 wt % showed excellent water solubility with a hydrodynamic size of ca. 15 nm. Intriguingly, HA-GS-MP was extremely stable, without any drug leakage, under physiological environment while rapidly releasing 6-MP in response to 10 mM glutathione. HA-GS-MP exhibited obvious targetability and markedly enhanced antitumor effect to OCI/AML-2 human AML cells (IC50 = 16.9 μg 6-MP equiv./mL). The pharmacokinetic studies displayed that Cy5-labeled HA-GS-MP had a long circulation time in mice (elimination half-life = 4.37 h). The in vivo fluorescence images demonstrated strong and persistent accumulation of Cy5-labeled HA-GS-MP from 4 to 48 h post injection in the subcutaneous OCI/AML-2 tumor in nude mice. Notably, HA-GS-MP while causing little side effects induced significantly enhanced growth inhibition of OCI/AML-2 tumor and better survival rate of OCI/AML-2 tumor-bearing mice as compared to free 6-MP. Carbonyl vinyl sulfide-linked hyaluronic acid-mercaptopurine prodrug has appeared to be a simple and smart nanomedicine for targeted treatment of AML.
链接：http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.biomac.7b00846