Tailor-made dual pH-sensitive polymer-doxorubicin nanoparticles for efficient anticancer drug delivery.

TLDR: A tailor-made dual pH-sensitive polymer-drug conjugate nanoparticulate system has showed enhanced cytotoxicity in drug-resistant cancer stem cells, indicating its great potential for cancer therapy.

Abstract: Efficient delivery of therapeutics into tumor cells to increase the intracellular drug concentration is a major challenge for cancer therapy due to drug resistance and inefficient cellular uptake Herein, we have designed a tailor-made dual pH-sensitive polymer–drug conjugate nanoparticulate system to overcome the challenges The nanoparticle is capable of reversing its surface charge from negative to positive at tumor extracellular pH (∼68) to facilitate cell internalization Subsequently, the significantly increased acidity in subcellular compartments such as the endosome (∼50) further promotes doxorubicin release from the endocytosed drug carriers This dual pH-sensitive nanoparticle has showed enhanced cytotoxicity in drug-resistant cancer stem cells, indicating its great potential for cancer therapy