Design and fabrication of hypoxia-responsive nanogel composed of mPEG-Azo-Chitosan@DOX against MCF-7 breast cancer stem cells in vitro

Abstract

In this study, a smart nanoparticle will be presented, which has the ability to show different functions with two different functions, in physiological (normal tissue, blood flow) and pathological (cancerous tissue) environments. The nanogel system is capable of targeted drug release in a controlled manner in response to hypoxia changes (the first step for targeting dormant cells with characteristics of cancer stem cells) of the tumor tissue. In the second step, after cellular absorption, drug release takes place under the acidic environment of lysosome. As a result, with this strategy, cancer stem cells can be specifically targeted by taking advantage of tumor hypoxia conditions.