Long wavelength light (LWL) activated prodrug conjugates are a promising system to prevent systemic side effects and reduce drug resistance in cancer therapy. These systems have been applied for spatiotemporal-and dose-controlled drug release under low-energy LWL irradiation. Compared with other drug release systems, LWL-activated prodrug conjugates offer deeptissue cancer therapies at the desired site and time with excitation only by LWL. Therefore, the fabrication of LWLactivated prodrug conjugates is highly important. To achieve this goal, a LWL transducer that could convert LWL into an ondemand stimulus for prodrug activation was proposed. This Minireview summarizes the latest developments of light transduction and the application in LWL-activated prodrug conjugates for biomedical applications.
Design of LWL-Activated Prodrug ConjugatesIdeally, LWL-activated prodrug conjugates provide targeted drug release under lower energy light irradiation. In order to design effective LWL-activated prodrug conjugates, the following principle should be fulfilled: the prodrug conjugates are composed of a LWL-sensitive transducer, caged chemotherapeutic drugs and specific stimuli-responsive linkers. When conjugates are exposed to LWL irradiation, the transducers
We firstly perpared liposome coated [Ir(pq)2(bpy)]Cl (Ir@liposome) as a transducer for radiopharmaceutical (18F-FDG) excited phosphorescence imaging (REPI).
The front cover artwork is provided by groups of Hong Yang and Gang Han at the College of Chemistry and Materials Science at Shanghai Normal University (China) and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at UMass Medical School (United States). The image shows a purple sphere transducer linked with a non‐active prodrug by photosensitive linkers. Upon irradiation with long‐wavelength light, the transducer converts the incident light to short wavelength emission to cleave the photocleavable linkers and trigger drug release. Read the full text of the Minireview, in which such developments in light‐activated prodrugs for biomedical application are reviewed, athttps://doi.org/10.1002/cptc.201800147.
The Front Cover illustrates the process by which a long‐wavelength‐light transducer converts long‐wavelength red light into short‐wavelength light to cleave the photoactivatable linkers and trigger drug release. After the cleavage, the active drug molecules released from the prodrug conjugates are applied in biochemical therapy. More information can be found in the Minireview by Y. Hou et al. on page 1005 in Issue 12, 2018 (DOI: 10.1002/cptc.201800147).
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