Research on Therapeutic Prodrugs for Targeted Cancer Therapy

A special issue of Pharmaceutics (ISSN 1999-4923). This special issue belongs to the section "Drug Targeting and Design".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 November 2023) | Viewed by 3599

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Department of Chemical Biology & Therapeutics, 262 Danny Thomas Place, Memphis, TN, USA
Interests: prodrugs; targeted therapy; peptide-drug conjugates; therapeutics; diagnostics; theranostics
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Guest Editor
Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences, JIS Institute of Advanced Studies and Research, JIS University, West Bengal 700091, India
Interests: prodrugs; targeted therapy; diagnostics; theranostics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Departement of Molecular Biochemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland
Interests: prodrugs; targeted therapy; peptide-drug conjugates; protease inhibitors

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Despite scientific breakthroughs within the past decades, cancer remains a dominant cause of mortality worldwide, mainly due to its abnormal metabolism. Each cancer type is closely associated with unique hallmarks within its microenvironment, which can be exploited to distinguish healthy and malignant tumor cells and achieve targeted therapy. Along these lines, prodrugs are often invoked to selectively populate the desired cancer cells with cytotoxic agents, as they can be sculpted as desired to offer a personalized therapeutic approach. Certain markers overexpressed in the tumor microenvironment (receptors, enzymes, hypoxia, pH, ROS) are the main targets for prodrug-based approaches, usually realized via attachment of bioreducible moieties and/or tumor-homing elements (e.g. peptides) to the parent drug. Prodrugs are usually associated with enhanced specificity and pharmacokinetic properties.

This Special Issue aims to highlight the recent advances within the design, synthesis and evaluation of the efficacy and properties of cancer-targeted prodrugs, ultimately intending to advance the field of cancer therapy.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but not limited to) the utilization of bio-responsive moieties (e.g. enzyme cleavable groups) and bioconjugation approaches (e.g. peptide-drug conjugation).

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Eirinaios I. Vrettos
Dr. Sankarprasad Bhuniya
Dr. Dawid Dębowski
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • cancer
  • cancer therapy
  • prodrug
  • peptide-drug conjugate
  • synthesis and characterization
  • tumor microenvironment
  • tumor targeting

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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12 pages, 2172 KiB  
Article
Nanocarrier Design for Dual-Targeted Therapy of In-Stent Restenosis
by Ivan S. Alferiev, Kehan Zhang, Zoë Folchman-Wagner, Richard F. Adamo, David T. Guerrero, Ilia Fishbein, Danielle Soberman, Robert J. Levy and Michael Chorny
Pharmaceutics 2024, 16(2), 188; https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmaceutics16020188 - 29 Jan 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1515
Abstract
The injury-triggered reocclusion (restenosis) of arteries treated with angioplasty to relieve atherosclerotic obstruction remains a challenge due to limitations of existing therapies. A combination of magnetic guidance and affinity-mediated arterial binding can pave the way to a new approach for treating restenosis by [...] Read more.
The injury-triggered reocclusion (restenosis) of arteries treated with angioplasty to relieve atherosclerotic obstruction remains a challenge due to limitations of existing therapies. A combination of magnetic guidance and affinity-mediated arterial binding can pave the way to a new approach for treating restenosis by enabling efficient site-specific localization of therapeutic agents formulated in magnetizable nanoparticles (MNPs) and by maintaining their presence at the site of arterial injury throughout the vulnerability period of the disease. In these studies, we investigated a dual-targeted antirestenotic strategy using drug-loaded biodegradable MNPs, surface-modified with a fibrin-avid peptide to provide affinity for the injured arterial wall. The MNPs were characterized with regard to their magnetic properties, efficiency of surface functionalization, disassembly kinetics, and interaction with fibrin-coated substrates. The antiproliferative effects of MNPs formulated with paclitaxel were studied in vitro using a fetal cell line (A10) exhibiting the defining characteristics of neointimal smooth muscle cells. Animal studies examined the efficiency of combined (physical/affinity) MNP targeting to stented arteries in Sprague Dawley rats using fluorimetric analysis and fluorescent in vivo imaging. The antirestenotic effect of the dual-targeted therapy was determined in a rat model of in-stent restenosis 28 days post-treatment. The results showed that MNPs can be efficiently functionalized to exhibit a strong binding affinity using a simple two-step chemical process, without adversely affecting their size distribution, magnetic properties, or antiproliferative potency. Dual-targeted delivery strongly enhanced the localization and retention of MNPs in stented carotid arteries up to 7 days post-treatment, while minimizing redistribution of the carrier particles to peripheral tissues. Of the two targeting elements, the effect of magnetic guidance was shown to dominate arterial localization (p = 0.004 vs. 0.084 for magnetic targeting and peptide modification, respectively), consistent with the magnetically driven MNP accumulation step defining the extent of the ultimate affinity-mediated arterial binding and subsequent retention of the carrier particles. The enhanced arterial uptake and sustained presence of paclitaxel-loaded MNPs at the site of stent deployment were associated with a strong inhibition of restenosis in the rat carotid stenting model, with both the neointima-to-media ratio (N/M) and % stenosis markedly reduced in the dual-targeted treatment group (1.62 ± 0.2 and 21 ± 3 vs. 2.17 ± 0.40 and 29 ± 6 in the control animals; p < 0.05). We conclude that the dual-targeted delivery of antirestenotic agents formulated in fibrin-avid MNPs can provide a new platform for the safe and effective treatment of in-stent restenosis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Research on Therapeutic Prodrugs for Targeted Cancer Therapy)
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Review

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18 pages, 6864 KiB  
Review
Hypoxia-Activated Theragnostic Prodrugs (HATPs): Current State and Future Perspectives
by Sankarprasad Bhuniya and Eirinaios I. Vrettos
Pharmaceutics 2024, 16(4), 557; https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmaceutics16040557 - 19 Apr 2024
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1512
Abstract
Hypoxia is a significant feature of solid tumors and frequently poses a challenge to the effectiveness of tumor-targeted chemotherapeutics, thereby limiting their anticancer activity. Hypoxia-activated prodrugs represent a class of bio-reductive agents that can be selectively activated in hypoxic compartments to unleash the [...] Read more.
Hypoxia is a significant feature of solid tumors and frequently poses a challenge to the effectiveness of tumor-targeted chemotherapeutics, thereby limiting their anticancer activity. Hypoxia-activated prodrugs represent a class of bio-reductive agents that can be selectively activated in hypoxic compartments to unleash the toxic warhead and thus, eliminate malignant tumor cells. However, their applicability can be further elevated by installing fluorescent modalities to yield hypoxia-activated theragnostic prodrugs (HATPs), which can be utilized for the simultaneous visualization and treatment of hypoxic tumor cells. The scope of this review is to summarize noteworthy advances in recent HATPs, highlight the challenges and opportunities for their further development, and discuss their potency to serve as personalized medicines in the future. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Research on Therapeutic Prodrugs for Targeted Cancer Therapy)
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