Mortality rates for ovarian cancer have declined only slightly in the past forty years since the “War on Cancer” was declared. The current standard care of ovarian cancer is still cytoredutive surgery followed by several cycles of chemotherapy. The severe adverse effect from chemotherapy drug is a leading cause for the patients to fail in long term therapy post-surgery. New nanocarriers able to minimize the premature drug release in blood circulation while releasing drug on-demand at tumor site have profound impact on the improvement of the efficacy and toxicity profile of the chemotherapeutic drugs. Here we reported a unique type of extremely long tumor retention, multi-responsive boronate crosslinked micelles (BCM) for ovarian cancer therapy. We systemically investigated the stability of BCM in serum and plasma, and their responsiveness to acidic pH and cis-diols (such as mannitol, a safe FDA approved drug for diuresis) through particle size measurement and förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) approach. Paclitaxel (PTX) loaded BCM (BCM-PTX) exhibited higher stability than non-crosslinked micelles (NCM) in the presence of plasma or serum. BCMs possessed a longer in vivo blood circulation time when compared to NCM. Furthermore, BCM could be disassembled in an acidic pH environment or by administrating mannitol, facilitating drug release in an acidic tumor environment and triggered by exogenous stimuli after drug enrichment in tumor mass. Near infra-red fluorescence (NIRF) imaging on SKOV-3 ovarian cancer mouse model demonstrated that the NIR dye DiD encapsulated BCM could preferentially accumulate in tumor site and their tumor retention was very long with still 66% remained on 12th day post injection. DiD-NCM had similar high- level uptake in tumor with DiD-BCM within the first 3 days, its accumulation, however, decreased obviously on 4th day and only 15% dye was left 12 days later. In both formulations, the dye uptake in normal organs was mostly washed away within the first 24–48 hrs. In in vivo tumor treatment study, PTX loaded BCM showed superior therapeutic efficacy than that of NCM and Taxol. The mice could tolerate 20 mg/kg PTX formulated in nano-formulations, which doubled the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) of Taxol. The administration of mannitol 24 hrs after BCM-PTX injection further improved the tumor therapeutic effect and elongated the survival time of the mice. The novel boronate-catechol crosslinked nanocarrier platform demonstrated its superior capability in targeted drug delivery, which is not only useful for ovarian cancer treatment but will also be beneficial for the therapy of many other solid tumors.

Systemic chemotherapy is efficacious against triple‐negative breast cancer (TNBC), but it is often associated with serious side effects. Here, a luteinizing hormone‐releasing hormone (LHRH) receptor‐targeted and tumor microenvironment‐responsive nanoparticle system to selectively deliver chemotherapeutic drugs to TNBC cells, is reported. This delivery system (termed “LHRH‐DCMs”) contains poly(ethylene glycol) and dendritic cholic acid as a micellar carrier, reversible intra‐micellar disulfide bond as a redox‐responsive crosslink, and synthetic high‐affinity (D‐Lys)‐LHRH peptide as a targeting moiety. LHRH‐DCMs exhibit high drug loading efficiency, optimal particle size, good colloidal stability, and glutathione‐responsive drug release. As expected, LHRH‐DCMs are more efficiently internalized into human TNBC cells through receptor‐mediated endocytosis, resulting in stronger cytotoxicity against these cancer cells than the non‐targeted counterpart when encapsulated with paclitaxel (PTX). Furthermore, near‐infrared fluorescence and magnetic resonance imaging demonstrate that LHRH‐DCMs facilitate the tumor distribution and penetration of payloads in three different animal models of breast cancer, including cell line‐derived xenograft (CDX), patient‐derived xenograft (PDX), and transgenic mammary carcinoma. Finally, in vivo therapeutic studies show that PTX‐LHRH‐DCMs outperform both the corresponding nontargeted PTX‐DCMs and the current clinical formulation (Taxol) in an orthotopic TNBC model. These results provide new insights into approaches for precise drug delivery of TNBC.

PEG-dendritic block copolymer (telodendrimer) is a unique class of polymers with well-defined structures and tunable aggregation properties, which have been recently developed as novel micelle-based nanocarriers. This new class of nanocarrier is highly versatile, robust, multifunctional and has many unique properties for drug delivery that are superior to most other nanocarriers reported in the literature. Reversible crosslinking of micelles is able to minimize the premature drug release during circulation. These crosslinks can be reversed with endogenous and/or exogenous stimuli. To further facilitate the precise delivery of nanoparticle drugs to cancer cells, the nanoparticles surface can be decorated with ovarian cancer targeting ligands. This review is focused on the various strategies used for the design, preparation, pharmacokinetic, biodistribution and preclinical therapeutic applications of telodendrimer-based nanocarriers for drug delivery in the treatment of ovarian cancer. Lastly, future perspectives for the development of ovarian cancer-targeting telodendrimer nanotherapeutics are also explored.

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