초록 |
Cancer nanomedicine using nanoparticle-based delivery system has shown outstanding promise for improving anticancer treatment for last decades. However, the limited targeting efficiency, lower drug loading efficiency and innate toxicity of nano-sized drug carriers caused severe problems so that there are few clinically available. Here, we newly developed a self-assembled and tumor cell-specific prodrug containing tumor cell-overexpressed cathepsin B-cleavable peptide and doxorubicin (DOX), which can form stable nanoparticle structure without any natural and synthetic drug carriers. Our new carrier-free nanoparticles can solve many serious problems of current drug carriers including the lower drug lading efficiency, toxicity of nanoparticle itself, limited targeting efficiency, and quality control of mass production of nanoparticles for clinical applications. |