Thermosensitive And Folate Functionalized Pluronic Micelles For Delivery Of Anticancer Drugs

In the last few years, polymer micelles were widely used in the delivery system of hydrophobic drug due to its superior biocompatibility, low toxicity and long circulation time,. PEO-PPO-PEO block copolymer (Pluronic) was highlighted for its excellent biocompatibility and had already approved for use in drug additives by FDA. In this study, Pluronic was chemical modified to enhance the thermo-sensitivity and tumor-targeted ability of its polymer micelles, so as to be applied in the field of anticancer drug delivery system.In this study, a thermosensitive amphiphilic block copolymer Pluronic-PNH-PNAS was synthesized via RAFT polymerization. And folate was employed into the copolymer to increase their uptake within target tumor cells whose folate receptors are vastly over-expressed. FT-IR、1H NMR、DLS、GPC、TEM and UV spectrophotometry were used to characterize the properties of the polymer (FA-Pluronic-PNH) and polymer micelles. Doxorubicin(DOX) with hydrophobicity was introduced as a model drug. Drug loading (DL), encapsulation efficiency (EE) and drug release of the DOX-loaded micelles were tested with UV spectrophotometry. The NIH3T3cell lines were used to primarily evaluate the toxicity of polymer. The cytotoxicity and cellular uptake of free DOX and DOX-loaded micelles on HeLa and A549cell lines over-expressed folate receptors were compared.