Hydroxyethyl starch–10-hydroxy camptothecin conjugate: synthesis, pharmacokinetics, cytotoxicity and pharmacodynamics research

In this study, 10-HCPT-hydroxyethyl starch (HES) conjugate was prepared to overcome these limits of 10-HCPT. The solubility of 10-HCPT conjugate was 0.72 mg/ml, about 100 times to free 10-HCPT.

The 10-HCPT conjugate showed good sustained release effect in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), rat plasma and liver homogenate. Meanwhile, 10-HCPT–HES conjugate achieved much lower IC 50 and higher cytotoxicity effects than the free 10-HCPT on Hep-3B liver cancer cells. The pharmacokinetics results of 10-HCPT–HES conjugate demonstrated that the biological half-life of 10-HCPT was increased from 10 min to 4.38 h and the bioavailability was 40 times higher than the commercial 10-HCPT injection.