A Cell-Penetrating Polymer for Drug Delivering

The occurrence and development of diseases are usually related to abnormal intracellular signaling networks. The use of drugs to target and regulate the corresponding key molecules or functional pathways to intervene is an essential means of basic research and clinical treatment. Compared with traditional small molecule drugs, macromolecular drugs (such as proteins, antibodies, nucleic acids, etc.) have almost no restrictions on the types of target molecules recognized and have unique advantages in target specificity and drug efficacy. And this makes it one of the most promising and competitive fields of drug development. At present, the main targets of bio macromolecular drugs are located in the cell membrane or outside the cell because the selective permeability of the cell membrane prevents the drug from reaching the target position inside the cell smoothly. However, most of the potential targets of drugs are located inside cells, which also makes how to effectively deliver biomacromolecule drugs into cells a research hotspot in cancer treatment.

Cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) can mediate the entry of biological macromolecules into cells and have become excellent materials for drug delivery due to their high biocompatibility and non-toxicity. However, CPPs still have defects such as low drug delivery efficiency and poor tolerance in serum, so it is essential to improve and optimize CPPs. Recently, researchers found that targeting negatively charged cancer cell surfaces with positively charged cell-penetrating peptides can effectively solve drug delivery problems. The drug can smoothly pass through the blood-brain barrier and target cancer cells by optimizing a positively charged TAT oligomer. This TAT polymer is a universal delivery system that can achieve the intervention and function regulation of the corresponding intracellular target only by combining with different functional proteins to achieve the purpose of treating related diseases. Therefore, this technology only provides a new strategy for the intracellular delivery of biological macromolecules and shows great potential in cancer therapy.

The Advantages of this platform include:

• Wide range of applications
• No side effects and toxicity
• High delivery efficiency
• Target inside cells

Potential Applications

• Development of drug delivery materials
• Research on cancer treatment

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Reference

1. Kim GC, Cheon DH, Lee Y. Challenge to overcome current limitations of cell-penetrating peptides. Biochim Biophys Acta Proteins Proteom. 2021 Apr;1869(4):140604. DOI: 10.1016/j.bbapap.2021.140604.