Design and development of polymeric micelles with cleavable links for intracellular drug delivery

Redox state is a term used widely in the research field of free radicals and oxidative stress. Unfortunately, it is used as a general term referring to relative changes that are not well defined or quantitated. In this review we provide a definition for the redox environment of biological fluids, cell organelles, cells, or tissue. We illustrate how the reduction potential of various redox couples can be estimated with the Nernst equation and show how pH and the concentrations of the species comprising different redox couples influence the reduction potential. We discuss how the redox state of the glutathione disulfide-glutathione couple (GSSG/2GSH) can serve as an important indicator of redox environment. There are many redox couples in a cell that work together to maintain the redox environment; the GSSG/2GSH couple is the most abundant redox couple in a cell. Changes of the half-cell reduction potential (E(hc)) of the GSSG/2GSH couple appear to correlate with the biological status of the cell: proliferation E(hc) approximately -240 mV; differentiation E(hc) approximately -200 mV; or apoptosis E(hc) approximately -170 mV. These estimates can be used to more fully understand the redox biochemistry that results from oxidative stress. These are the first steps toward a new quantitative biology, which hopefully will provide a rationale and understanding of the cellular mechanisms associated with cell growth and development, signaling, and reductive or oxidative stress.

As we enter the twenty-first century, research at the interface of polymer chemistry and the biomedical sciences has given rise to the first nano-sized (5-100 nm) polymer-based pharmaceuticals, the 'polymer therapeutics'. Polymer therapeutics include rationally designed macromolecular drugs, polymer-drug and polymer-protein conjugates, polymeric micelles containing covalently bound drug, and polyplexes for DNA delivery. The successful clinical application of polymer-protein conjugates, and promising clinical results arising from trials with polymer-anticancer-drug conjugates, bode well for the future design and development of the ever more sophisticated bio-nanotechnologies that are needed to realize the full potential of the post-genomic age.

The lack of safe and efficient gene-delivery methods is a limiting obstacle to human gene therapy. Synthetic gene-delivery agents, although safer than recombinant viruses, generally do not possess the required efficacy. In recent years, a variety of effective polymers have been designed specifically for gene delivery, and much has been learned about their structure-function relationships. With the growing understanding of polymer gene-delivery mechanisms and continued efforts of creative polymer chemists, it is likely that polymer-based gene-delivery systems will become an important tool for human gene therapy.