Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of enzymatically cleavable NSAIDs prodrugs derived from self-immolative dendritic scaffolds for the treatment of inflammatory diseases

It has been reported that delivery systems based on dendritic prodrugs of Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs) improved the properties of drug molecules and reduced the side effects and irritation on the gastric mucosa. To find a more effective way in NSAIDs dendritic prodrugs, in this paper, three different dendritic scaffolds of enzymatically cleavable naproxen conjugates have been synthesized in a convergent approach and well characterized by NMR and MS techniques. These self-immolative dendritic NISADs prodrugs programmed to release multiple molecules of the potent naproxen after a single enzymatic activation step, and in 50% human plasma, the drug released from the compound T3 reaching 47.3% after 24 h in vitro assay. Moreover, all prodrugs were also found to maintain more significant anti-inflammatory activity, no significant cytotoxicity against HEK293 cells and less degree of ulcerogenic potential in vivo than their monomeric counterpart naproxen. These results provided an effective entry to the development of new dendritic NSAIDs prodrugs. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.