Polymerization Induced Self-Assembly inside mitochondria for cancer therapy

Abstract

Specific molecular-targeted theranostics, which is based on the inhibition of enzymes or DNA destruction, is being used for developing anticancer drugs. Despite these advances, however, it have still problem such as drug resistance or weak interaction between drugs and pharmaceutical targets for enhanced theranostics. As an alternative, nanostructures, which can target organelle of cancer cells. Molecular assembly is emerging strategy to construct functional materials for therapeutic and diagnostic techniques such as drug delivery or biosensor. In particular, position specific assembly is one of attractive strategy to overcome the shortcomings of drug, including drug resistance because of their unique physical attributes with multivalent binding affinity. In this regards, we proposed intra-mitochondrial polymerization induced self-assembly (Mito-PISA), which forms structures inside mitochondria for inducing mitochondria mediated cellular death. The building blocks, which are accumulated into mitochondria, cause the polymerization with specific environment of cancerous mitochondria. The polymerization changes hydrophobicity with inducing self-assembly simultaneously, which leads to form structures inside mitochondria. The structures cause mitochondrial damage, leading to mitochondria-mediated cellular death in cancer cells specifically.