Cucurbiturils as containers for medicinal compounds

Abstract

The drug efficacy problem related to the stability of medicinal preparations and to the specificity of their action is now among the most important in pharmacology and medicine. One way to solve this prob lem is to create structures with the ability to encapsulate a therapeutic agent in order to release it over a given time at a particular site. Cucurbiturils are an example of such "host molecules." Encapsulation will allow us to increase the solubility of compounds, control the release of an agent and its cell penetration mechanism, and alter the distribution of a medicine and its retention in the body; it can also improve its shelf life stability and decrease the level of its degradation in vivo. Nevertheless, although they are well known as good complex formers, cucurbiturils remain underexplored. This review includes a description of the mechanism for the formation of cucurbituril complexes with different compounds and gives examples of the already created complexes with a variety of medicinal agents; it also outlines the problems associated with the further appli cations of cucurbiturils as medicinal compound carriers, pointing to the need for further studies in vivo and in vitro.

Probing Reversible Guest Binding with Hyperpolarized 129Xe-NMR: Characteristics and Applications for Cucurbit[n]urils

“…To some extent, the solubility of these members might be enhanced by utilizing cations or positively charged guest molecules [87,88]. Additionally, solubility issue might be surpassed by synthesizing substituted CB[n]s with units that could enhance the solubility of CB[n]s in common solvents and also provides a handle that is suitable for further functionalization [87] [98][99][100][101]. The guest encapsulation is facilitated by ion-dipole interactions and through (non-)classical hydrophobic effects [102,103].…”

Calorimetric and spectroscopic investigations of interactions between cucurbituril Q7 and gemcitabine in aqueous solutions

“…Cucurbit [7]uril hydrate (Sigma-Aldrich, powder containing 80% Q7 and 20% water), gemcitabine hydrochloride (Sigma-Aldrich, powder, C 98%), hydrochloric acid fixonal (POCh, 1 M), sodium hydroxide (POCh, C 99.8%), sodium chloride (Sigma-Aldrich, C 99.5%) were purchased from commercial sources. Water (for ITC and pHmetric titration) was distilled three times and degassed .…”

“…Many research centers have carried out studies on the use of cucurbiturils as transporters of toxic medicines [7], including oncological drugs [8][9][10][11]. Cucurbiturils (CB, Q) are a relatively new group of macrocyclic compounds, whose structures contain a repeatedly duplicated motif of glycoluril [12].…”

Directly Functionalized Cucurbit[7]uril as a Biosensor for the Selective Detection of Protein Interactions by 129Xe hyperCEST NMR

“…[27][28][29] Recently,C Bns have been explored as drug carriers that improve chemical stabilitya nd solubility of their drug payload. [26,30,31] Further,CB7 has shown utility for controlled release of drugs in cancerous cells. [32] Cao et al reported synthesis of a directly biotinylated CB7 (btCB7, Figure 1a)a sacarrier for anticancer drugs to murine lymphocytic leukemia (L1210FR) cancer cells, which overexpress biotin receptors.…”