Theranostics 2018; 8(2):464-485. doi:10.7150/thno.22711 This issue Cite
Review
1. Tongji School of Pharmacy, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, P.R. China;
2. National Engineering Research Center for Nanomedicine, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, P.R. China;
3. Hubei Engineering Research Center for Novel Drug Delivery System, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, P.R. China.
* Conglian Yang and Tingting Wu contributed equally to this work.
D-ɑ-tocopheryl polyethylene glycol succinate (Vitamin E TPGS or TPGS) has been approved by FDA as a safe adjuvant and widely used in drug delivery systems. The biological and physicochemical properties of TPGS provide multiple advantages for its applications in drug delivery like high biocompatibility, enhancement of drug solubility, improvement of drug permeation and selective antitumor activity. Notably, TPGS can inhibit the activity of ATP dependent P-glycoprotein and act as a potent excipient for overcoming multi-drug resistance (MDR) in tumor. In this review, we aim to discuss the recent advances of TPGS in drug delivery including TPGS based prodrugs, nitric oxide donor and polymers, and unmodified TPGS based formulations. These potential applications are focused on enhancing delivery efficiency as well as the therapeutic effect of agents, especially on overcoming MDR of tumors. It also demonstrates that the clinical translation of TPGS based nanomedicines is still faced with many challenges, which requires more detailed study on TPGS properties and based delivery system in the future.
Keywords: Vitamin E, TPGS, drug delivery, multi-drug resistance, anticancer.