Colon targeted releases and uptakes of paclitaxel loaded in modified porous starch

Hyaluronic acid can modify porous starch through cross-linking and hydrogen bonding, effectively achieving a paclitaxel entrapment efficiency of ∼92 % and drug loading of ∼23 %. In this study, the pores and intergranular gaps of porous starch were filled with paclitaxel under solvent volatilization, and the enrichment process and its characteristics were recorded using a microscope. The paclitaxel-loaded particles were coated with chitosan-phytic acid to target the colon. In vivo imaging in mice showed that the capsule released paclitaxel in the colon rather than in the upper digestive tract, and the paclitaxel distribution in the main organs at 24 h was significantly lower than that of raw paclitaxel. Hyaluronic acid-modified porous starch can target cancer cells. Cell internalization of paclitaxel mediated by hyaluronic acid was approximately 1.97 times that of raw paclitaxel, higher than that of receptor-shielded cells and cells incubated with unmodified carriers, as evidenced by the accumulation of fluorescent paclitaxel in the nucleus and marked cell apoptosis. The hyaluronic acid-modified porous starch system is an effective method for the high-load and targeted release of hydrophobic anticancer drugs.

Materials

Normal corn starch (purity > 99 %, amylose/amylopectin: 23/77, M_W = 8.42 × 10⁴ kDa) was supplied by Shandong Dazong Biological Development Co., Ltd. (Shandong, China). PTX (purity 99 %) and α-amylase(A834632) were purchased from Beijing innochem Science & Technology Co., Ltd. (Beijing, China). Fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC), nile red, hyaluronidase (H3506), and amyloglucosidase (AMG, EC 3.2.1.3) were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich Chemical Co. (St, Louis, MO, USA).

Beibei Zhao, Zhengbiao Gu, Zhaofeng Li, Li Cheng, Caiming Li, Yan Hong, Colon targeted releases and uptakes of paclitaxel loaded in modified porous starch, Carbohydrate Polymers, Volume 318, 2023, 121126, ISSN 0144-8617,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbpol.2023.121126.

See our introduction article on chitosan as a pharmaceutical excipient: