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Antitumor activity of the polymeric conjugates bearing derivatives of protease inhibitors and conventional cytostatics for the treatment of head and neck tumors
Běhalová, Kateřina ; Kovář, Marek (advisor) ; Vodička, Pavel (referee)
Head and neck cancers account for about 4,6 % of all malignancies worldwide and their incidence is increasing. However, the development of chemotherapeutics in this field is rather stagnating. One promising approach seems to be the repurposing of drugs originally developed and clinically used as HIV protease inhibitors, which have also been described to have anticancer activity. Esterification of the OH group of these drugs with 5-methyl-4-oxohexanoic acid allows their attachment via pH-sensitive hydrazone linkage to a hydrophilic and biocompatible HPMA copolymer carrier. This binding provides an improvement in the pharmacokinetics of the drug, prolongs its circulation time in the bloodstream, lowers its side effects and it also allows passive accumulation of the drug in the tumor tissue due to the EPR effect. Six protease inhibitors in total (ritonavir, lopinavir, saquinavir, indinavir, nelfinavir and atazanavir) were derivatized as described above. Ritonavir and its derivative had been tested in a previous project and were used as reference substances. After initial determination of in vitro cytostatic and cytotoxic activity in FaDu (human head and neck carcinoma), SCC7 (murine squamous cell carcinoma), 4T1 (murine breast carcinoma) and CT26 (murine colon carcinoma) cell lines, lopinavir derivative was...
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