Hydroxyethyl starch conjugates for improving the stability, pharmacokinetic behavior and antitumor activity of 10-hydroxy camptothecin.

10-Hydroxy camptothecin (10-HCPT)-hydroxyethyl starch (HES) conjugates were prepared to improve the water solubility, prolong the half-life in plasma and increase the antitumor efficacy of 10-HCPT, and the structures of the conjugates were confirmed by NMR and infrared spectroscopy. The 10-HCPT conjugates showed good sustained release effect in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), rat plasma and liver homogenate. Meanwhile, 10-HCPT-HES conjugates achieved much lower IC50 and higher cytotoxicity effects than the free 10-HCPT on Hep-3B and SMMC-7721 cell lines. The pharmacokinetics results of 10-HCPT-HES conjugates demonstrated that the biological half-life of 10-HCPT was increased from 10 min to 2.94 h and 3.76 h, respectively, in comparison with the commercial 10-HCPT injection. The pharmacodynamics results indicated that 10-HCPT-HES conjugate had a better antitumor efficiency against nude mouse with Hep-3B tumor than the commercial 10-HCPT injection, and the inhibition ratio of tumor was 78.3% and 31.5%, respectively, at the dose of 1.0 mg/kg. These findings suggest that 10-HCPT-HES conjugate is a promising drug delivery system providing improved long circulating effect, greater stability and better antitumor effect.