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encapsulate docetaxel.10 In this study we have found that extre-
mely hydrophobic lipid core environment can be created to accom-
modate nonpolar hydrophobic drugs in the micelle core by
introducing saturated fatty acids instead of oligopeptides into the
cyclic phosphazene template as a hydrophobic group. Herein we
report synthesis and properties of steric amphiphiles bearing equi-
molar methoxy poly(ethylene glycol) and saturated fatty acid.
Since saturated fatty acids have only one functional group, car-
boxylic acid, which is known to lead to phosphazene ring cleavage
reaction,13 it was necessary to employ a spacer group with two
functional groups such as tyrosine to link fatty acid to the phos-
phazene ring. Among the saturated fatty acid ethyl esters,
CH3(CH2)nCOOEt, lauric (n = 10), myristic (n = 12), palmitic
(n = 14), and stearic (n = 16) acids were selected considering their
hydrophobicity defined as logP where P = [solute]n-octanol/[sol-
ute]water14 and the hydrophilicity of methoxy poly(ethylene glycol)
(MPEG) to be employed. Thus, in order to link fatty acid to the cyc-
lic phosphazene ring, we have prepared in the first step tyrosine-
fatty acid conjugates according to the following reaction Scheme 1
(Supplementary data). Fatty acids were easily coupled with tyro-
sine through amide bond using N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS) and
N,N0-dicyclohexylcarbodiimide (DCC) as coupling agents. The
resultant tyrosine-fatty acid conjugates were transformed to so-
dium salts for nucleophilic substitution with the chlorine atoms
of the cyclic phosphazene trimer.
In order to obtain pure tripodal cyclotriphosphazene amphi-
philes, it is important to perform the initial PEGylation reaction
of the cyclotriphosphazene ring at low temperature (<ꢀ20 °C) so
that the first three chlorine atoms of hexachlorocyclotriphospha-
zene can be substituted with PEG in cis-nongeminal way. Then
the tyrosine-fatty acid conjugates (Tyr-FA) were grafted by substi-
tution with the remaining three chlorine atoms of the cyclotri-
phosphazene ring according to the following reaction Scheme 2
(Supplementary data). The 1H and 31P NMR spectra measured
using Varian 500 MHz NMR spectrometer are illustrated in Fig-
ure 1. In particular, it is clearly seen from the single peak of phos-
phorus resonance that both of hydrophilic and hydrophobic side
groups are grafted in cis-nongeminal way to form a tripodal steric
amphiphile as shown in the Scheme.
However, MPEG550 and MPEG750 produced water soluble deriva-
tives with both Tyr-Lau and Tyr-Myr conjugates. More hydropho-
bic Tyr-Pal and Tyr-Ste conjugates gave rise to water soluble
products only with more hydrophilic MPEG1000. Thus we have
prepared from appropriate combinations of MPEGs and Tyr-FA
conjugates shown in the table seven soluble amphiphilic cyclotri-
phosphazenes, which were clearly characterized by means of ele-
mental analysis, 1H and 31P NMR, dynamic light scattering (DLS),
critical micelle concentration (CMC), etc. (Supplementary data).
All these amphiphilic cyclotriphosphazene products were obtained
in little sticky white solids, which are very soluble in water and po-
lar organic solvents.
The morphology of the present trimer amphiphiles bearing fatty
acids was found to be spherical micelles, as shown in the TEM im-
age of [NP(MPEG1000)(Tyr-Ste)]3 measured by JEM-2100F15 and
illustrated in Figure 2. Also the particle size distributions of the
present fatty acid grafted amphiphiles were measured for 0.5%
aqueous solution by dynamic light scattering (DLS) method using
Malvern Zetasizer (Nano-ZS), and the representative results are
displayed in Figure 3. Thus the fatty acid grafted amphiphiles exhi-
bit the same morphology as the oligopeptide analogues but have
shown quite different behavior in aqueous solution. For example,
we have shown that, in case of oligopeptide analogues,16 the mor-
phology of the trimer amphiphiles is determined mainly by the
hydrophobicity of the oligopeptide employed (logPolig). Thus if
logPolig is in the range of 0–1, the trimer amphiphiles initially
form spherical micelles of 10–20 nm in aqueous solution but
slowly reassemble into larger double layered polymersomes of
100–1000 nm in diameter. However, if logPolig is larger than 1,
the initially formed micelles of 7–8 nm in diameter remain un-
changed in morphology. In contrast to such a variable morphology
of the trimer amphiphiles bearing oligopeptides, the trimeric ana-
logues of tyrosine-fatty acid conjugates with very high hydropho-
bicity (logPTyr-FA = 5.26–7.84) were found to form only highly
stable micelles with extremely law CMC values in aqueous solution
as will be shown later. Such a different behavior in morphology
seems to be attributed to the difference in the chemical nature of
the two hydrophobic groups. In other words, oligopeptides have
many functional groups such as amine and carbonyl groups around
the peptide backbone, which can afford partially polarized micelle
core environments while fatty acids are mainly composed of ali-
phatic hydrocarbon chains without polar groups. Such a difference
in the chemical environment of the micelle cores composed of the
trimer amphiphiles bearing fatty acids and oligopeptides is ex-
pected to affect the physicochemical properties such as micelle
size and stability, thermal sensitivity, drug loading capacity, and
drug releasing kinetics of the micelles.
We have attempted to prepare water soluble analogues of
amphiphilic cyclotriphosphazenes bearing fatty acids by different
combinations from four MPEGs of different hydrophilicity and four
fatty acids of different hydrophobicity shown in Table 1. We have
found that water insoluble products are resulted when the overall
hydrophobicity (logPsum), that is, the sum of the hydrophobicity of
the hydrophobic group, Tyr-FA (logPTyr-FA) and that of the hydro-
philic group MPEG (logPMPEG) is larger than 4.5. For example,
MPEG350 (logP = ꢀ1.42) gave a water soluble cyclotriphosphazene
product with Tyr-Lau conjugate (logP = 5.26) but insoluble prod-
ucts with Tyr-Myr conjugate (logP = 6.17) and other more hydro-
phobic tyrosine-fatty acid conjugates (Tyr-FA) in the table.
In order to examine the physicochemical properties of the
fatty acid grafted cyclotriphosphazene amphiphiles as new drug
delivery systems, in addition to the DLS measurements above-
mentioned, we have measured their lower critical solution
O
H
N
O
R
H
N
O
R
n
NaH
1. DCC, NHS, EtOAc, 12h, rt
O
O
OH
n
O
THF, rt, 12h
O
ONa
n
2. TEEH, TEA, CHCl3, 24h, rt
OH
Tyr-FA
n = 10 = Lauric acid
n = 12 = Myristic acid
n = 14 = Palmitic acid
n = 16 = Stearic acid
Na
Tyr-FA
R = C2H5
Scheme 1. Synthetic route to conjugation of fatty acids to a spacer group tyrosine.