PEGylated Redox/pH Dual‐Responsive Dendritic Prodrugs Based on Boltorn® H40 for Tumor Triggered Paclitaxel Delivery

Abstract A new PEGylated redox/pH dual‐responsive dendritic prodrug (H40‐SS‐PTX/PEG) based on commercially available dendritic polyester, boltorn® H40 (H40), as starting core template was developed and characterized for tumor triggered paclitaxel delivery. The size of the nanocarrier was determined 100 nm by TEM. The results of in vitro drug release study showed that the designed prodrugs exhibit quite intelligent behavior. Thus, under normal physiological conditions (pH=7.4), a very small amount of the drug was released, while in the case of tumor tissue (pH=5.5 and 10 mM DTT) a significant percentage of the drug was released in a same time. Also, the study of the effectiveness of the prodrugs under in vitro condition showed very good results on human breast adenocarcinoma cells. These results suggest that H40‐SS‐PTX/PEG could be a promising multifunctional nanocarrier with excellent stability for safely delivering and releasing of the drug molecules inside the cancerous cells.