Glycyrrhetinic acid modified and pH-sensitive mixed micelles improve the anticancer effect of curcumin in hepatoma carcinoma cells

Abstract

Curcumin (CUR), a natural polyphenolic compound existing in plants, exhibits anticancer potential in inhibiting the growth of various types of human cancer.

Modulation of Macrophages Using Nanoformulations with Curcumin to Treat Inflammatory Diseases: A Concise Review

“…The aromatic backbone structure of phosphorus dendrons brings the nanomicelles with great rigidity and stability, and only 20% of Cur can be released from the C11G3-TBP@Cur complexes within 9 days, thus avoiding the burst release of Cur. In addition, various targeting molecules can be modified on the surface of polymeric micelles, including mitochondrial targeting agent [ 66 ], GA [ 67 ], and peptide [ 68 ], etc., so that Cur-loaded polymeric micelles can be precisely localized to the disease area to reduce the toxicity of drugs to normal tissues.…”

Folate modified dual pH/reduction-responsive mixed micelles assembled using FA-PEG-PDEAEMA and PEG-SS-PCL for doxorubicin delivery

“…Fortunately, mixed polymeric micelles provide a valid strategy to overcome this difficulty. [20][21][22] By combining two or more dissimilar species of polymers with different functional blocks, mixed polymeric micelles can easily achieve multiple stimuli-response and active targeting functions without complicated synthetic procedures. And the particle size, drug loading capacity and controlled drug release performance can also be adjusted by altering the species or the proportion of the polymers in the mixtures.…”

Recent Advances in Nanotechnology-Based Targeted Delivery Systems of Active Constituents in Natural Medicines for Cancer Treatment

“…Compared with conventional chemotherapy drugs, natural medicines have the characteristics of multi-component, multi-pathway, and multi-target actions and play a significant role in the prevention and treatment of cancer. For example, curcumin (CUR) and resveratrol (RES) can not only directly play a cytotoxic role on tumor cells but also treat cancer by regulating the tumor microenvironment [12][13][14]. Moreover, the combination of natural medicines with chemotherapy drugs to treat cancer can overcome or reverse MDR, improve efficacy, and reduce the toxic side effects, becoming a new strategy for tumor treatment in recent years [15,16].…”

“…Chemical structures of compounds with antitumor activity in natural medicines are shown in Figure 1. Molecules 2023, 28, 7767 3 of 33 However, the majority of effective ingredients in natural medicines have the deficiencies of low solubility, low bioavailability, and poor tumor targeting efficiency, which limit their clinical applications [13,17]. Using nano-targeted formulations as drug delivery systems can not only solve the problems mentioned above but also achieve simultaneous deliveries of multiple drug components [18].…”