A clickable folic acid-rhamnose conjugate for selective binding to cancer cells

Abstract

Specific cell surface receptors present in abundance on tumor cells have been used for targeted therapies of antibodies. Antibody based therapies involving antibody recruiting molecules (ARM) for treatment of cancer are selective and have low occurrence of side effects. The therapeutic potential of these therapies can be made more efficient by utilizing endogenously present antibodies in human serum. Herein we designed, synthesized and evaluated the potential of a novel ARM having folic acid as a targeting ligand and l-rhamnose as antibody recruiting molecule, linked via a tetraethylene glycol moiety. Exposure of tumor cells to the conjugate resulted in efficient and cell specific binding which was observed using alkyne as a reporter through click chemistry.