Clinical Medicine Insights: Women's Health

Taxol is recognized as one of the most potent anticancer agents used in the treatment of breast and ovarian cancers, which are common cancers in women. To overcome its shortcomings, that is, its low water-solubility that reduces drug loading capacity of DDS carriers when incorporating taxol, chemo-enzymatic synthesis of ester-linked taxol-glucose conjugate, i.e., 7-propionyltaxol 2"-O-α-D-glucoside, as a water soluble taxol prodrug was achieved by using a-glucosidase as a glucosylation catalyst. The water-solubility of 7-propionyltaxol 2"-O-α-D-glucoside (25 mM) was 63 fold higher than that of taxol (0.4 mM). The pre-S1 peptide which displays on the surface of bio-nanocapsules, which are nanoparticles composed of the hepatitis B virus surface antigen, was replaced with the antibody affinity motif of protein A. Conjugation of such bio-nanocapsules with anti-human epidermal growth factor receptor antibody gave hybrid bio-nanocapsules. The hybrid bio-nanocapsules were effective for delivering 7-propionyltaxol 2"-O--D-glucoside to human brain glioma cells. 7-Propionyltaxol 2"-O-α-D-glucoside was effectively hydrolyzed to give taxol in 95% by human glioma cells. The drug loading capacity of hybrid bio-nanocapsules incorporating 7-propionyltaxol 2"-O-α-D-glucoside was 120 times higher than that incorporating taxol itself.