Micelles Structure Development as a Strategy to Improve Smart Cancer Therapy

Abstract

Micelles as colloidal suspension have attracted considerable attention due to their potential use for both cancer diagnosis and therapy. These structures have proven their ability to deliver poorly water-soluble anticancer drugs, improve drug stability, and have good penetration and site-specificity, leading to enhance therapeutic efficacy. Micelles are composed of hydrophobic and hydrophilic components assembled into nanosized spherical, ellipsoid, cylindrical, or unilamellar structures. For their simple formation, they are widely studied, either by using opposite polymers attachment consisting of two or more block copolymers, or by using fatty acid molecules that can modify themselves in a rounded shape. Recently, hybrid and responsive stimuli nanomicelles are formed either by integration with metal nanoparticles such as silver, gold, iron oxide nanoparticles inside micelles or by a combination of lipids and polymers into single composite. Herein, through this special issue, an updated overview of micelles development and their application for cancer therapy will be discussed.

Recent advances in metallopolymer-based drug delivery systems

“…Promising DDSs are metallopolymers based on polymer micelles. 137,138 In particular, covalent attachment of a drug directly to a micelle is of interest to avoid its premature release in the circulation. So, poly(ethylene glycol)-block-PGA (PEG-b-PGA) was used as leaving group of the Pt(II) drugs of cisplatin and oxaliplatin.…”

Mucoadhesive Hydrogel Nanoparticles as Smart Biomedical Drug Delivery System

“…Poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) is a hydrophilic polymer [56] that adopts a random coil conformation in solution. In their recent work, Hanafy and his colleagues have further demonstrated that these coils have swelling properties under certain ionic strengths and salt concentrations, leading to extended chain conformations in alkaline solutions (Figure 4) [49,[57][58][59]. This is due to the COOH side chain which is pH responsive, i.e., protonated (COOH) at pH ≤5while de-protonated (COO-) at pH >5 [60].…”

Nanocarriers as Magic Bullets in the Treatment of Leukemia

“…They are composed of a monolayer of amphiphilic molecules that spontaneously tend to self-assemble in aqueous environments at a definite concentration, known as critical micelle concentration (CMC). These amphiphilic molecules are generally fatty acids, salts of fatty acid (soaps), phospholipids, or other similar amphiphilic compounds [37]. Micelles present either a hydrophobic core, exposing outside the hydrophilic polar heads, or a hydrophilic core, exposing outside the hydrophobic tails (inverted micelles) ( Figure 2) [38].…”