Production of elastin-like recombinamer-based nanoparticles for docetaxel encapsulation and use as smart drug-delivery systems using a supercritical anti-solvent process

This study presents a new groundbreaking methodology for integrating innovative concepts to develop novel drug-delivery strategies. This methodology combines genetically engineered elastin-like recombinamers (ELRs) with supercritical fluid (SCF) techniques to encapsulate a poorly water-soluble drug...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: González Valdivieso, Juan, Vallejo, Reinaldo, Santos García, María Mercedes, Rodríguez Rojo, Soraya, Arias Vallejo, Francisco Javier
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión enviada para evaluación y publicación
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Valladolid
Repositorio:UVaDOC. Repositorio Documental de la Universidad de Valladolid
OAI Identifier:oai:uvadoc.uva.es:10324/65543
Acceso en línea:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jiec.2020.10.013
https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/65543
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Elastin-like recombinamers (ELRs)
Supercritical anti-solvent (SAS)
Docetaxel
Drug delivery
Cancer therapy
Descripción
Sumario:This study presents a new groundbreaking methodology for integrating innovative concepts to develop novel drug-delivery strategies. This methodology combines genetically engineered elastin-like recombinamers (ELRs) with supercritical fluid (SCF) techniques to encapsulate a poorly water-soluble drug in a one-step process. The chemotherapeutic agent docetaxel (DTX) is encapsulated with a block copolymer ELR containing the RGD peptide, a specific target sequence for cancer cells, using the supercritical anti-solvent (SAS) technique in a high process yield of up to 70%. SEM studies show spherical microparticles of 10 mm after encapsulation. After dispersion under physiological conditions, microparticles disaggregate into stable monodisperse nanoparticles of 40 nm size and - 30 mV z-potential. This protects the drug, as confirmed by NMR analysis, thereby increasing the water solubility of DTX up to fifty orders of magnitude. The delivery process is governed by the Fick diffusion mechanism and indicates that the presence of DTX on the particles surface is practically negligible. Cellular assays showed that, due to the presence of the cancer target sequence RGD, breast cancer cells were more affected than human endothelial cells, thus meaning that the strategy developed in this work opens the way to new controlled release systems more precise than non-selective chemotherapeutic drugs.