Preparation of fluorophore-tagged polymeric drug delivery vehicles with multiple biological stimuli-triggered drug release.

In the field of drug delivery, the controlled release of drugs is continuously one of the highly prioritized research domains. Stimuli-responsive polymers are being investigated as drug delivery vehicles that modulate pharmaceutical effect via tumor specific mechanisms. In this work, a biocompatible graft copolymer (denoted as PSNC-g-mPEG/TPE) was constructed, which comprised a triple-responsive polycarbonate backbone coupled with fluorescent TPE and hydrophilic methoxypoly(ethylene glycol) (mPEG) segments. This multifunctional amphiphilic copolymer was able to self-assemble in aqueous solutions and acted as a drug delivery vehicle that releases cargo in response to multiple biological stimuli (ROS, pH and enzymes). And the results of confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) suggested that these micelles could be rapidly internalized by cells and achieve more effective drug release in cancer cells. Furthermore, the cytotoxicity assays proved the safety of this material. It is anticipated that this strategy has enormous potential in constructing novel anticancer therapeutics.