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  • pH-Responsive Nanoscale Covalent Organic Polymers as a Biodegradable Drug Carrier for Combined Photodynamic Chemotherapy of Cancer.

pH-Responsive Nanoscale Covalent Organic Polymers as a Biodegradable Drug Carrier for Combined Photodynamic Chemotherapy of Cancer.

ACS applied materials & interfaces (2018-04-13)
Hairong Wang, Wenwen Zhu, Jingjing Liu, Ziliang Dong, Zhuang Liu
ABSTRACT

Covalent organic polymers (COPs) are a promising class of cross-linked polymeric networks and porous structures composed of covalent organic molecules that attract extensive attention. Despite increasing interest in applying COPs for applications in nanomedicine, the pH-sensitive COPs that are able to sensitively respond to the slightly acidic tumor microenvironment for tumor-specific drug delivery and therapy remain to be explored to our best knowledge. Herein, a new style of pH-responsive COPs were prepared using acryloyl meso-tetra( p-hydroxyphenyl) porphine (acryloyl-THPP) to react with 4,4'-trimethylene dipiperidine to form the pH-responsive cross-linked biodegradable β-amino esters (BAEs). Amine-modified poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) was then introduced to terminate the reaction and form the PEG shell. The formulated pH-responsive THPP-BAE-PEG COPs can be utilized to encapsulate anticancer drug doxorubicin (DOX) due to their porous structure. Upon intravenous injection, such DOX-loaded COPs show a prolonged blood circulation as well as an efficient tumor accumulation. Along with the pH-triggered drug release for chemotherapy, the singlet oxygen produced by THPP under light exposure for photodynamic therapy would further endow us a combined treatment strategy, which offers synergistic antitumor effects in our in vivo tumor model experiments. Our study illustrates that COPs fabricated with tumor microenvironment responsive linkers may be a promising type of materials for applications in cancer nanomedicine.

MATERIALS
Product Number
Brand
Product Description

Sigma-Aldrich
Tris(hydroxypropyl)phosphine, ≥80%
Sigma-Aldrich
4,4′-Trimethylenedipiperidine, 97%