Polygemcitabine nanogels with accelerated drug activation for cancer therapy.

To overcome the slow activation of gemcitabine, we synthesized a DNA-like polygemcitabine (Ge10) strand through solid-phase synthesis, which not only undergoes rapid intracellular degradation to generate active gemcitabine derivatives, but can also self-assemble into nanogels through molecular recognition, rendering them as promising self-delivered nanodrugs for cancer therapy.