{"title":"Challenging and new opportunities for prodrug technology.","authors":"Helin Li, Xuelian Shen, Yu Chu, Panhong Yuan, Qi Shuai","doi":"10.1007/s10637-025-01515-w","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Research on prodrug technology has opened new avenues for site-directed chemotherapy rather than systemic chemotherapy. This distinctive strategy allows drug delivery to be activated by light-, irradiation-, or ultrasound (US)-tunable chemistries, which have been termed photopharmacology, radiopharmacology, and sonopharmacology, respectively. Prodrugs have emerged as a main strategy for improving pharmacokinetics, reducing side effects, and thus enhancing the therapeutic efficacy of drugs. This review summarizes stimuli-responsive drug release systems and the latest progress in exogenous stimuli-responsive prodrug activation, e.g., light, irradiation, and US, with a focus on the activation of small molecule prodrugs, antibody‒drug conjugates, and prodrug nanosystems. In addition, challenges encountered by Pt drugs and Pt(IV) prodrug nanotherapeutics are summarized and discussed. Moreover, this review presents the current state of precise treatment and discusses the opportunities and challenges for the clinical translation of these strategies.</p>","PeriodicalId":14513,"journal":{"name":"Investigational New Drugs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Investigational New Drugs","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10637-025-01515-w","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ONCOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Research on prodrug technology has opened new avenues for site-directed chemotherapy rather than systemic chemotherapy. This distinctive strategy allows drug delivery to be activated by light-, irradiation-, or ultrasound (US)-tunable chemistries, which have been termed photopharmacology, radiopharmacology, and sonopharmacology, respectively. Prodrugs have emerged as a main strategy for improving pharmacokinetics, reducing side effects, and thus enhancing the therapeutic efficacy of drugs. This review summarizes stimuli-responsive drug release systems and the latest progress in exogenous stimuli-responsive prodrug activation, e.g., light, irradiation, and US, with a focus on the activation of small molecule prodrugs, antibody‒drug conjugates, and prodrug nanosystems. In addition, challenges encountered by Pt drugs and Pt(IV) prodrug nanotherapeutics are summarized and discussed. Moreover, this review presents the current state of precise treatment and discusses the opportunities and challenges for the clinical translation of these strategies.
期刊介绍:
The development of new anticancer agents is one of the most rapidly changing aspects of cancer research. Investigational New Drugs provides a forum for the rapid dissemination of information on new anticancer agents. The papers published are of interest to the medical chemist, toxicologist, pharmacist, pharmacologist, biostatistician and clinical oncologist. Investigational New Drugs provides the fastest possible publication of new discoveries and results for the whole community of scientists developing anticancer agents.