TP5

Developing bioactive delivery carriers with anti-inflammatory functions, long-term administration, and controlled release of multiple drugs is highly desirable owing to disease persistence over an extended period. In this study, a dynamically induced covalent assembly approach was used to fabricate thymopentin (TP5)-based carrier particles (TGCP) with biocompatibility and autofluorescence. The size and dispersibility of TGCP can be modulated by non-covalent interactions with hyaluronic acid (HA), endowing the system with excellent injectability and synergistic anti-inflammatory activity. Interestingly, the carrier can load a wide range of guest molecules with varying solubilities and achieve controlled gradient release in pathological and physiological environments. In addition, traditional Chinese-medicine-loaded TGCP/HA can effectively reduce the level of the inflammatory factor IL-6, indicating its potential anti-inflammatory properties. The TP5/HA-based material possesses excellent carrier properties and immunoreactivity, making it attractive for reducing inflammation at disease sites and long-term drug delivery in various chronic diseases.

Salvia miltiorrhiza ethanol-extracted polysaccharide (SMEP) and thymopentin (TP5) have been proved with strong immunomodulatory activity, and T cells subsets play pivotal roles in the inhibition of solid tumors growth. In the present study, the structure of SMEP was further identified via methylation and nuclear magnetic resonance spectra, and the immunomodulatory activity in combination with TP5 was investigated via evaluating T cell subsets spatial distributions in tumor-bearing mice, finally the cellular status of solid tumor cells was analyzed. The results revealed that SMEP was a neutral heteropolysaccharide using (1 → 4)-α-D-Glcp and (2 → 1)-β-D-Fruf as the main chain, along with branched chains of (1 → 6)-α-D-Galp. The SMEP+TP5 treatments could effectively promote the differentiation and improve the specific recognition capacity of CD4⁺ T cells in tumor-bearing mice, thereby activate tumor-infiltrating CD8⁺ T cells to exert cytotoxic effects, finally promoting the tumor cells apoptosis via blocking cell cycle at G0/G1 phase, which might be relevant with suppression of Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway. These findings highlighted the potential of SMEP as an immunoadjuvant for patients bearing immune-deficiency related diseases, and provided data support for the functional researches of T cell subsets in tumor immunity.