a Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Tumor Microenvironment Responsive Drug Research, Hunan Province Cooperative Innovation Center for Molecular Target New Drug Study, School of Pharmacology, Hengyang Medical School, University of South China, Hengyang, Hunan, 421001, China;
b UCL School of Pharmacy, University College London, London, WC1N1AX, UK
Funds:
This work was supported by the Overseas Study Program of China Scholarship Council (Grant No.:202202505006),the Excellent Youth Project of Education Department of Hunan Province of China (Project No.:23B0447),the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province of China (Grant No.:2021JJ30597),the Health Research Project of Hunan Provincial Health Commission,China (Grant No.:202113022002),and the Hengyang Guided Science and Technology Project,China (Grant No.:2020jh042809).
Hyperbranched polymers (HBPs) have drawn great interest in the biomedical field on account of their special morphology, low viscosity, self-regulation and facile preparation methods. Moreover, their large intramolecular cavities, high biocompatibility, biodegradability, and targeting properties render them very suitable for anti-tumor drug delivery. Recently, exploiting the specific characteristics of the tumor microenvironment, a range of multifunctional HBPs responsive to the tumor microenvironment have emerged. By further introducing various types of drugs through physical embedding or chemical coupling, the resulting HBPs based delivery systems have played a crucial part in improving drug stability, increasing effective drug concentration, decreasing drug toxicity and side effects, and enhancing anti-tumor effect. Here, based on different types of tumor microenvironment stimulation signals such as pH, redox, temperature, etc., we systematically review the preparation and response mechanism of HBPs, summarize the latest advances in drug delivery applications, and analyze the challenges and future research directions for such nanomaterials in biomedical clinical applications.