Novel applications of dds on infectious diseases and future prospect “drug delivery system responding to cellular signals in infected cells”

In this study, we designed a peptide which is specifically cleaved by HIV protease as a gene/drug carrier. This is based on a new concept of a drug delivery system (DDS) responding to intracellular signals. We observed that this peptide was cleaved by recombinant HIV protease and HIV infected cells. In this system, the gene/drug can be released only in HIV infected cells. Since drugs could be activated only in infected cells, this system has a potential to raise the efficacy of drugs and reduce their side effects. As a biological signal, nitric oxide (NO) has aroused much attention. NO is a promising biological signal as well as a HIV protease in the new concept of DDS. However, it is extremely difficult to measure directly because of extreme short half-life time. We will introduce our system to measure NO directly by an electrode method.