Abstract:
A star-shaped polymer adamantane-poly(ε-caprolactone)-
b-poly(2-(diethylamino)ethyl methacrylate)-
b-poly(poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate)
4 (Ad-(PCL-
b-PDEAEMA-
b-PPEGMA)
4) and its pH-responsive self-assembled polymeric micelles were developed for adriamycin (DOX) delivery. This star-shaped polymer was synthesized via ring-opening polymerization (ROP) and activators regenerated by electron transfer atom transfer radical polymerization (ARGET ATRP), and characterized by
1H NMR spectroscopy, gel permeation chromatograph (GPC), fluorescence spectra and dynamic light scattering (DLS). The resulting polymer had a definite structure with a narrow molecular weight distribution (PDI<1.3); the critical micelle concentration (CMC) of the polymer was very low (3.4 mg/L), which indicated that the polymeric micelles would keep stable in blood circulation system; resulting from the protonation of the tertiary amine group of PDEAEMA, the release performance of micelles at pH = 5.0 were rapider than that at pH=7.4 and pH=6.8. The results shows that pH-responsive Ad-(PCL-
b-PDEAEMA-
b-PPEGMA)
4 micelles could be a potential carrier for targeted delivery of anti-cancer drugs with controlled and sustained release behavior.