Research Article A Redox-Sensitive Micelle-Like Nanoparticle Self-Assembled from Amphiphilic Adriamycin-Human Serum Albumin Conjugates for Tumor Targeted Therapy

Copyright © 2015 Lin Chen et al.This is an open access article distributed under the Creative CommonsAttribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The application of chemotherapeutic drug adriamycin (ADR) in cancer therapy is limited by its side effects like high toxicity and insolubility. Nanomedicine offers new hope for overcoming the shortcomings. But how to increase in vivo stability and to control intracellular drug release is a key issue for nano-based formulations. Herein, the hydrophobic ADR was successfully linked to the biocompatible human serum albumin (HSA) by disulfide bond 3-(2-pyridyldithio) propionyl hydrazide (PDPH), resulting in amphiphilic HSA-ADR. The novel ADR-HSA micellar NPs which were thus assembled exhibited a well-defined stable core shell structurewith glutathione (GSH) sensitive linkers.The stable PDPH linkers at extracellular level were broken byGSHat intracellular level with a controlled ADR release profile.The in vitro cytotoxicity against gastric cancer cells (NCI-N87) was obviously enhanced by such redox-sensitive ADR-HSA NPs. Additionally, as observed by IVIS Lumina II Imaging System (Xenogen), the intratumo