Combination of Gemcitabine with Cell-Penetrating Peptides: A Pharmacokinetic Approach Using in Silico Tools

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2019

Authors

Ferreira, A (Author) Other; Lapa, RAS (Author) FFUP; Nuno Vale (Author) ICBAS

Journal

Title: Biomolecules

Vol. 9 No. 9

Final page: 693

ISSN: 2218-273X

Publisher: MDPI

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 8 Citations

Scopus - 8 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-00R-8XJ

DOI: 10.3390/biom9110693

Abstract (EN): Gemcitabine is an anticancer drug used to treat a wide range of solid tumors and is a first line treatment for pancreatic cancer. Our group has previously developed novel conjugates of gemcitabine with cell-penetrating peptides (CPP), and here we report some preliminary data regarding the pharmacokinetics of gemcitabine, two gemcitabine-CPP conjugates and respective CPP gathered from GastroPlus (TM), and analyze these results considering our previous evaluation of gemcitabine release and conjugates' bioactivity. Additionally, seeking to shed some light on the relation between the penetration ability of CPP and their physicochemical properties, chemical descriptors for the 20 natural amino acids were calculated, a new principal property scale (z-scale) was created and CPP prediction models were developed, establishing quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSAR). The z-scores of the peptides conjugated with gemcitabine are presented and analyzed with the aforementioned data.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 12