{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,5]],"date-time":"2026-09-05T01:26:25Z","timestamp":1788571585350,"version":"build-2803163510"},"reference-count":54,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"5","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,2,28]],"date-time":"2022-02-28T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1646006400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100006221","name":"United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["2015365"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2015365"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100006221","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["IJMS"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Therapeutics with activity specifically at the inflamed sites throughout the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) would be a major advance in our therapeutic approach to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We aimed to develop the prodrug approach that can allow such site-specific drug delivery. Currently, using cyclosporine as a drug of choice in IBD is limited to the most severe cases due to substantial systemic toxicities and narrow therapeutic index of this drug. Previously, we synthesized a series of a phospholipid-linker-cyclosporine (PLC) prodrugs designed to exploit the overexpression of phospholipase A2 (PLA2) in the inflamed intestinal tissues, as the prodrug-activating enzyme. Nevertheless, the extent and rate of prodrug activation differed significantly. In this study we applied in-vitro and modern in-silico tools based on molecular dynamics (MD) simulation, to gain insight into the dynamics and mechanisms of the PLC prodrug activation. We aimed to elucidate the reason for the significant activation change between different linker lengths in our prodrug design. Our work reveals that the PLC conjugate with the 12-carbon linker length yields the optimal prodrug activation by PLA2 in comparison to shorter linker length (6-carbons). This optimized length efficiently allows cyclosporine to be released from the prodrug to the active pocket of PLA2. This newly developed mechanistic approach, presented in this study, can be applied for future prodrug optimization to accomplish optimal prodrug activation and drug targeting in various conditions that include overexpression of PLA2.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/ijms23052673","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,2,28]],"date-time":"2022-02-28T20:11:14Z","timestamp":1646079074000},"page":"2673","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":12,"title":["Prodrug-Based Targeting Approach for Inflammatory Bowel Diseases Therapy: Mechanistic Study of Phospholipid-Linker-Cyclosporine PLA2-Mediated Activation"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"23","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3998-1833","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Milica","family":"Markovic","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Clinical Pharmacology, School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 8410501, Israel"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0272-0047","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Karina","family":"Abramov-Harpaz","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Chemistry, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 8410501, Israel"},{"name":"Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 8410501, Israel"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Clil","family":"Regev","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Chemistry, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 8410501, Israel"},{"name":"Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 8410501, Israel"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7551-5488","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Shimon","family":"Ben-Shabat","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Clinical Pharmacology, School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 8410501, Israel"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4576-638X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Aaron","family":"Aponick","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Chemistry, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32603, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Ellen M.","family":"Zimmermann","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32610, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yifat","family":"Miller","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Chemistry, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 8410501, Israel"},{"name":"Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 8410501, Israel"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3498-3514","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Arik","family":"Dahan","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Clinical Pharmacology, School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 8410501, Israel"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,2,28]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2066","DOI":"10.1056\/NEJMra0804647","article-title":"Inflammatory Bowel Disease","volume":"361","author":"Abraham","year":"2009","journal-title":"N. 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