Polyglutamic acid-based crosslinked doxorubicin nanogels as an anti-metastatic treatment for triple negative breast cancer.

Treatment of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC)-associated metastasis represents an unmet clinical need, and we lack effective therapeutics for a disease that exhibits high relapse rates and associates with poor patient outcomes. Advanced nanosized drug delivery systems may enhance the efficacy of first-line chemotherapeutics by altering drug pharmacokinetics and enhancing tumor/metastasis targeting to significantly improve efficacy and safety. Herein, we propose the application of injectable poly-amino acid-based nanogels (NGs) as a versatile hydrophilic drug delivery platform for the treatment of TNBC lung metastasis.

Aggregation-Induced Emission Properties in Fully π-Conjugated Polymers, Dendrimers, and Oligomers.

Aggregation-Induced Emission (AIE) in organic molecules has recently attracted the attention of the scientific community because of their potential applications in different fields. Compared to small molecules, little attention has been paid to polymers and oligomers that exhibit AIE, despite having excellent properties such as high emission efficiency in aggregate and solid states, signal amplification effect, good processability and the availability of multiple functionalization sites. In addition to these features, if the molecular structure is fully conjugated, intramolecular electronic interactions between the composing chromophores may appear, thus giving rise to a wealth of new photophysical properties.

Influence of the reducing-end anomeric configuration of the Man epitope on DC-SIGN recognition.

High-mannose (ManGlcNAc) is the main carbohydrate unit present in viral envelope glycoproteins such as gp120 of HIV and the GP1 of Ebola virus. This oligosaccharide comprises the Man epitope conjugated to two terminal N-acetylglucosamines by otherwise rarely-encountered β-mannose glycosidic bond. Formation of this challenging linkage is the bottleneck of the few synthetic approaches described to prepare high mannose.

Matrix Metalloproteinase-sensitive Multistage Nanogels Promote Drug Transport in 3D Tumor Model.

Physiological barriers inside of tumor tissue often result in poor interstitial penetration and heterogeneous intratumoral distribution of nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems (DDS). Novel, matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-sensitive peptide-crosslinked nanogels (pNGs) as multistage DDS are reported with a beneficial size reduction property to promote the process of deep tissue penetration. : The presented pNGs are based on a dendritic polyglycerol (dPG) scaffold crosslinked by a modified MMP-sensitive fluorogenic peptide.

Co-targeting the tumor endothelium and P-selectin-expressing glioblastoma cells leads to a remarkable therapeutic outcome.

Glioblastoma is a highly aggressive brain tumor. Current standard-of-care results in a marginal therapeutic outcome, partly due to acquirement of resistance and insufficient blood-brain barrier (BBB) penetration of chemotherapeutics. To circumvent these limitations, we conjugated the chemotherapy paclitaxel (PTX) to a dendritic polyglycerol sulfate (dPGS) nanocarrier.