Development of stimuli-responsive intelligent polymer micelles for the delivery of doxorubicin

Abstract

Doxorubicin is still used as a first-line drug in current therapeutics for numerous types of malignant tumours (including lymphoma, transplantable leukaemia and solid tumour). Nevertheless, to overcome the serious side effects like cardiotoxicity and myelosuppression caused by effective doses of doxorubicin remains as a world-class puzzle. In recent years, the usage of biocompatible polymeric nanomaterials to form an intelligently sensitive carrier for the targeted release in tumour microenvironment has attracted wide attention. These different intelligent polymeric micelles (PMs) could change the pharmacokinetics process of drugs or respond in the special microenvironment of tumour site to maximise the efficacy and reduce the toxicity of doxorubicin in other tissues and organs. Several intelligent PMs have already been in the clinical research stage and planned for market. Therefore, related research remains active, and the latest nanotechnology approaches for doxorubicin delivery are always in the spotlight. Centring on the model drugs doxorubicin, this review summarised the mechanisms of PMs, classified the polymers used in the application of doxorubicin delivery and discussed some interesting and imaginative smart PMs in recent years.

Keywords:

• Doxorubicin
• intelligent polymeric micelles
• tumour microenvironment
• stimuli-responsive
• targeted delivery

Disclosure statement

We declare that we have no conflict of interest or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the Major Research Project of Shandong Province, P.R. China [No. 2018GSF118004] and Shandong Provincial Major Science &Technology Innovation Project, P.R. China [2018CXGC1411] and Major Basic Research Projects of Shandong Natural Science Foundation, P.R. China [No. ZR2018ZC0232].