Multifunctional and multiresponsive hydrogels have presented a promising platform to design and fabricate smart devices for application in a wide variety of fields. However, their preparations often involve multistep preparation of multiresponsive polymer precursors, tedious reactions to introduce functional groups or sophisticated molecular designs. In this work, a multifunctional boronic acid-based cross-linker bis(phenylboronic acid carbamoyl) cystamine (BPBAC) was readily prepared from inexpensive commercially available 3-carboxylphenylboronic acid (CPBA) and cystamine dihydrochloride, which has the ability to cross-link the cis-diols and catechol-containing hydrophilic polymers to form hydrogels. Due to the presence of the reversible and dynamic boronate ester and disulfide bonds, the obtained hydrogels were demonstrated to not only possess pH, glucose, and redox triresponsive features, but also have autonomic self-healing properties under ambient conditions. Moreover, we can modulate the rheological and mechanical properties by simply adjusting the BPBAC amount. The features, such as commercially available starting materials, easy-to-implement approach, and versatility in controlling cross-linking network and mechanical properties, make the strategy described here a promising platform for fabricating multifunctional and smart hydrogels.

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Synergistic combination therapy by integrating chemotherapeutics and chemosensitizers into nanoparticles has demonstrated great potential to reduce side effects, overcome multidrug resistance (MDR), and thus improve therapeutic efficacy. However, with regard to the nanocarriers for multidrug codelivery, it remains a strong challenge to maintain design simplicity, while incorporating the desirable multifunctionalities, such as coloaded high payloads, targeted delivery, hemodynamic stability, and also to ensure low drug leakage before reaching the tumor site, but simultaneously the corelease of drugs in the same cancer cell. Herein, we developed a facile modular coassembly approach to construct an all-in-one multifunctional multidrug delivery system for the synergistic codelivery of doxorubicin (DOX, chemotherapeutic agent) and curcumin (CUR, MDR modulator). The acid-cleavable PEGylated polymeric prodrug (DOX-h-PCEC), tumor cell-specific targeting peptide (CRGDK-PEG-PCL), and natural chemosensitizer (CUR) were ratiometrically assembled into in one single nanocarrier (CUR/DOX-h-PCEC@CRGDK NPs). The resulting CUR/DOX-h-PCEC@CRGDK NPs exhibited several desirable characteristics, such as efficient and ratiometric drug loading, high hemodynamic stability and low drug leakage, tumor intracellular acid-triggered cleavage, and subsequent intracellular simultaneous drug corelease, which are expected to maximize a synergistic effect of chemotherapy and chemosensitization. Collectively, the multifunctional nanocarrier is feasible for the creation of a robust nanoplatform for targeted multidrug codelivery and efficient MDR modulation.

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