Combinatorial Screening for Specific Drug Solubilizers with Switchable Release Profiles

Polymer-block-peptide conjugates are tailored to render hydrophobic small molecule drugs water soluble. The combinatorial strategy selects for bioconjugates that exhibit sequence-specific solubilization and switchable release profiles of the cargo through incorporation of a disulfide linker moiety into the peptide-library design. While the study focused on the photosensitizer m-THPC and reductive carrier cleavage, the approach is generic and might be expanded toward a broad range of poorly soluble small-molecule drugs and other selective cleavage mechanisms to disassemble a peptide binding domain of the bioconjugate-based solubilizer.