writer：Bai, Y.,* Liu, C.P., Chen, D., Zhuo, L.H., Bu, H.T., Tian, W.*
keywords：β-cyclodextrin; controlled drug delivery; host–guest interaction; stimuli-responsive; supramolecular self-assemblies
source：期刊
specific source：Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry. 2019, 15, 1925-1932.
Issue time：2019年

Although stimuli-responsive supramolecular self-assemblies have been constructed, the controlled drug delivery induced by morphology transitions of these supramolecular self-assemblies on the basis of host–guest-conjugated monomers (HGCMs) are few reported. In this paper, the self-assembly behaviors of AB2-type HGCMs, e.g., β-cyclodextrin-benzimidazole2 (β-CD-BM2), were investigated at neutral and acidic pH conditions, respectively. Specifically, β-CD-BM2 first self-assembled into fan-shaped supramolecular self-assemblies with a hydrodynamic diameter of 163 nm at neutral pH, whereas they were further dissociated into spherical supramolecular self-assemblies with a size of 52 nm under acidic conditions. This morphology transition process was utilized toconduct a two-stage DOX delivery under neutral and acidic pH. Basic cell experiments demonstrated that the drug-loaded β-CDBM2-based supramolecular self-assemblies with varied morphology could inhibit cancer cell proliferation, indicating their potential application in the field of drug delivery.