Di Francesco Valentina, Di Francesco Martina, Decuzzi Paolo, Palomba Roberto, Ferreira Miguel
Laboratory of Nanotechnology for Precision Medicine, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Morego 30, 16163 Genoa, Italy.
Department of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and System Engineering, University of Genoa, Via Opera Pia 13, 16145 Genoa, Italy.
Pharmaceutics. 2021 Mar 4;13(3):332. doi: 10.3390/pharmaceutics13030332.
Methotrexate (MTX), a compound originally used as an anticancer drug, has also found applications in a broad variety of autoimmune disorders thanks to its anti-inflammation and immunomodulatory functions. The broad application of MTX is anyway limited by its poor solubility in biological fluids, its poor bioavailability and its toxicity. In addition, encapsulating its original form in nanoformulation is very arduous due to its considerable hydrophobicity. In this work, two strategies to efficiently encapsulate MTX into liposomal particles are proposed to overcome the limitations mentioned above and to improve MTX bioavailability. MTX solubility was increased by conjugating the molecule to two different compounds: DSPE and PEG. These two compounds commonly enrich liposome formulations, and their encapsulation efficiency is very high. By using these two prodrugs (DSPE-MTX and PEG-MTX), we were able to generate liposomes comprising one or both of them and characterized their physiochemical features and their toxicity in primary macrophages. These formulations represent an initial step to the development of targeted liposomes or particles, which can be tailored for the specific application MTX is used for (cancer, autoimmune disease or others).
甲氨蝶呤(MTX)是一种最初用作抗癌药物的化合物,由于其抗炎和免疫调节功能,也在多种自身免疫性疾病中得到了应用。然而,MTX的广泛应用受到其在生物流体中溶解度差、生物利用度低和毒性的限制。此外,由于其相当大的疏水性,将其原始形式封装成纳米制剂非常困难。在这项工作中,提出了两种将MTX有效封装到脂质体颗粒中的策略,以克服上述限制并提高MTX的生物利用度。通过将MTX分子与两种不同的化合物(DSPE和PEG)共轭,提高了MTX的溶解度。这两种化合物通常用于丰富脂质体制剂,并且它们的包封效率非常高。通过使用这两种前药(DSPE-MTX和PEG-MTX),我们能够制备包含其中一种或两种的脂质体,并表征其物理化学特征及其在原代巨噬细胞中的毒性。这些制剂是开发靶向脂质体或颗粒的第一步,可针对MTX所用于的特定应用(癌症、自身免疫性疾病或其他)进行定制。