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Calixarene-integrated nano-drug delivery system for tumor-targeted delivery and tracking of anti-cancer drugs in vivo

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Abstract

Nano-drug delivery systems (nanoDDS) have been extensively investigated clinically to improve the therapeutic effect of anti-cancer drugs. However, the complicated synthesis during the preparation as well as the potential drug leakage during transportation has greatly limited their general application. In this work, a calixarene-integrated nanoDDS (CanD) that achieves tumor-targeted delivery and tracking of anti-cancer drugs in vivo is presented. The hypoxia-responsive calixarene (SAC4A) exhibits high binding affinity to a series of anti-cancer drugs and rhodamine B (RhB) under normoxic condition while decreasing the binding affinity under hypoxic condition, which leads to the drug release and fluorescence recovery simultaneously. Furthermore, the hypoxia-responsiveness of SAC4A conveys CanD with tumor-targeting ability, resulting in the enrichment of the drug in tumors and enhancement in tumor suppression in mice. Moreover, CanD could become a general platform allowing the delivery of a wide scope of anti-cancer drugs that have strong host-guest interaction with SAC4A.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Key Research and Development Programs of China (No. 2018YFA0209700), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, No. 22077073), Frontiers Science Center for New Organic Matter (No. 63181206), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Nankai University, No. 63206015).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Functional Polymer Materials of Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, China

    Lina Xu, Jingshan Chai, Ying Wang, Xinzhi Zhao, Linqi Shi, Zhanzhan Zhang & Yang Liu

  2. State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, China

    Lina Xu, Jingshan Chai, Ying Wang, Xinzhi Zhao, Linqi Shi, Zhanzhan Zhang & Yang Liu

  3. State Key Laboratory of Elemento-Organic Chemistry, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, China

    Dong-Sheng Guo

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  1. Lina Xu
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  2. Jingshan Chai
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Correspondence to Zhanzhan Zhang or Yang Liu.

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Xu, L., Chai, J., Wang, Y. et al. Calixarene-integrated nano-drug delivery system for tumor-targeted delivery and tracking of anti-cancer drugs in vivo. Nano Res. 15, 7295–7303 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4332-4

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