Study On Biomimic Drug-loaded Polymeric Micelles

Current cancer therapy involves chemotherapy to shrink any cancer by using anticancer drugs. Unfortunately, these drugs lack specificity to cancer cells and hence lead to severe side effects. In order to improve the specific delivery of drugs with low cytotoxicity, polymeric micelles have been the object of growing attention. This paper designs a new biomimic amphiphilic copolymer as durg delivery systems.Novel amphiphilic copolymers Chol-b-pMPC was synthesized via atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). The association behavior of Chol-b-pMPC in aqueous solution was studied by ~1H-NMR, fluorescence probe technique and atom force microscope (AFM).A commercial obtained polymeric amphiphiles, Chol-b-PEO which had a similar structure with Chol-b-pMPC, was used as a control in the cytotoxicity test. The results showed that Chol-b-PEO has obvious cytotoxicity while Chol-b-pMPC has good biocompatibility by osteoblast cell culture.Anti-cancer drug adriamycin (ADR) was chosen as a hydrophobic drug to be incorporated into the inner core of the micelles by the oil-in-water method, In vitro release experiments showed that the drug loading micelles present a sustained release behavior without any burst effect while free ADR release very quickly.The K562 tumor cell was chosen as the model to investigate the anti-cancer activity of the ADR-loaded micelles. The MTT assay showed that these drug-loaded micelles (CMPC-ADR) have the sustained release behavior. By loaded in polymeric micelles, ADR show less cytotoxicity than unloaded ADR at begin, and after 7 days culture the killing effect reach the same effect as unloaded ADR.These experimental results suggested that the micelles prepared from CMPC block copolymers could be a good candidate for anti-cancer drug delivery carrier.