Construction of nanohydrogels for enhanced delivery of hydrophilic and hydrophobic drugs and improving chemotherapy efficacy

Abstract

As an emerging drug carrier, nanohydrogels have been widely used for drug delivery. However, the traditional nanohydrogels are commonly limited to large molecular hydrophilic drug loading due to the structure features of high water content and large pore size. Herein, a novel supramolecular recognition assisted nanohydrogel drug delivery platform was designed and constructed. As a proof-of-concept, through the supramolecular drug&cyclodextrin complexes screening strategy, the newly designed nanohydrogels possess general loading capability for a wide variety of small molecular hydrophilic and hydrophobic drugs. The results demonstrated that the supramolecular interactions endow the nanohydrogels with higher drug loading efficiency and controlled release ability. More interesting, the as prepared supramolecular recognition assisted nanohydrogel showed wrinkled surface morphology that found to contribute to the enhanced tumor cell uptake and nuclear drug delivery. Furthermore, the improving anti-tumor efficacy was demonstrated in both in vitro and in vivo models. This work broadens the construction strategy of nanohydrogels and provides a general delivery platform for efficient tumor chemotherapy.