Abstract

Nanoparticles based on amphiphilic copolymers with tunable physicochemical properties can be used to encapsulate delicate pharmaceutics while at the same time improving their solubility, stability, pharmacokinetic properties, reducing immune surveillance, or achieving tumor-targeting ability. Those nanocarriers based on biodegradable aliphatic polycarbonates are a particularly promising platform for drug delivery due to flexibility in the design and synthesis of appropriate monomers and copolymers. Current studies in this field focus on the design and the synthesis of new effective carriers of hydrophobic drugs and their release in a controlled manner by exogenous or endogenous factors in tumor-specific regions. Reactive groups present in aliphatic carbonate copolymers, undergo a reaction under the action of a stimulus: e.g., acidic hydrolysis, oxidation, reduction, etc. leading to changes in the morphology of nanoparticles. This allows the release of the drug in a highly controlled manner and induces a desired therapeutic outcome without damaging healthy tissues. The presented review summarizes the current advances in chemistry and methods for designing stimuli-responsive nanocarriers based on aliphatic polycarbonates for controlled drug delivery.

Highlights

  • Nowadays, cancer is one of the biggest health problems in modern society, remaining one of the top three leading risk factors for global mortality [1]

  • We summarize recent advances in the development of stimuli-responsive nanoparticles based on aliphatic polycarbonates, highlighting the versatility of PEGylated APC in the fabrication of “smart” drug delivery systems

  • The copolymer was synthesized via combined ring-opening polymerization (ROP) and RAFT polymerization techniques which gives a huge amount of possibilities to functionalize such copolymers to achieve superior tumor-targeting efficiency

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Summary

Introduction

Cancer is one of the biggest health problems in modern society, remaining one of the top three leading risk factors for global mortality [1]. The aliphatic polycarbonates have great potential as “smart” anticancer drug delivery systems with desired features such as biodegradability, non-toxicity, and stimuli responsiveness to achieve tumor-targeting ability. Many studies have focused on the design and synthesis of novel efficient drug delivery systems, designed for transporting the anticancer therapeutics directly to cancer tissues and releasing the drug in a controlled manner by endogenous or exogenous factors [54,55,56]. To develop such stimuli-responsive polymeric nanocarriers, various stimuli-labile groups are used. Figure of of pH-sensitive degradable polymersomes or micelles based on Figure 1

Schematic
Redox-Responsive APC Nanocarriers
ROS-Responsive APC Nanocarriers
Light-Responsive APC Nanocarriers
Findings
Conclusions
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