Conjugation Of Doxorubicin With PLZ4 For Targeted Therapy Against Bladder Cancer Cells

Doxorubicin is an effective chemotherapy drug that kills many types of cancer cells.  However, the drug causes unwanted and sometimes fatal side effects like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and heart damage.  This is due to the doxorubicin affecting not only the cancer cells, but also the normal cells. We are developing a type of targeted therapy that concentrates doxorubicin in a particular type of cancer cells. Studies have shown that a peptide, called PLZ4, has high affinity for human bladder cancer cells and we hypothesize that conjugating Doxorubicin with PLZ4 will increase the effectiveness of treating bladder cancer with Doxorubicin while reducing harmful side effects.   We chemically linked doxorubicin to PLZ4 and verified the existence of the product using mass spectrometry. We are now purifying the Doxorubicin-PLZ4 conjugate, scaling up the synthesis and starting experiments with cancer cells to determine if this new molecule can kill bladder cancer cells. This research may lead to a new targeted therapy drug for bladder cancer, but the overall strategy can be applied to many other cancers.