Natural epothilone B (EPOB) is currently in clinical trials for treatment of advanced cancers. In this study, two poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-EPOB conjugates were synthesized with carbodiimide chemistry with linear PEG Methoxy-PEG-Carboxymethy(mPEG-COOH) with different molecular weights (5 and 20 kDa). The products were confirmed by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization timeof-flight mass spectroscopy and 1 H-NMR, which showed that PEGylation only took place at the 7-OH site of EPOB. The solubilities of PEG5K-EPOB the conjugate of mPEG-COOH (MW 5,000) and epothilone B and PEG20K-EPOB the conjugate of mPEG-COOH (MW 20,000) and epothilone B were determined to be 4.93 3 10 22 and 1.58 3 10 22 mmol/mL; this showed improvements of 35 and 11 times, respectively, over that of free EPOB (1.4 3 10 23 mmol/mL). Moreover, the conjugates were more stable than that of free EPOB in plasma.The cytotoxicity of conjugates was evaluated on human breast cancer MCF-7 cells with an 3-(4,5)-dimethylthiahiazo (-z-y1)-3,5-di-phenytetrazoliumromide(MTT) based assay. The half maximal inhibitory concentration of a substance(IC50) values of EPOB, PEG5K-EPOB, and PEG20K-EPOB were 6.0 3 10
24, 0.57, and 8.4 3 10 23 lM, respectively.