A novel nanoassembled doxorubicin prodrug with a high drug loading for anticancer drug delivery

We report here a novel doxorubicin (DOX) prodrug that reduces the proportion of inactive materials and minimizes drug leak. In aqueous solutions, the resulting DOX prodrug could spontaneously form stable micelles with diameters of ∼80 nm with a DOX loading content as high as ∼40 wt%. The subsequent cytotoxicity and cell internalization behavior indicated that the resulting prodrug could show a high in vitro anticancer efficacy. We believe that this strategy could be developed to design prodrugs of various anticancer drugs and thus offer new prodrugs for cancer therapy.