Abstract
Chitosan-coated magnetic nanoparticles are an appropriate drug delivery method which
can improve the therapeutic properties of chemotherapy agents and also can be useful
as MRI contrast agent for early cancer diagnosis. This research discovers the optimization
of the possible therapeutic effects of Chitosan- citric acid- Fe3O4- CUR quartets. Chitosan as a natural polymer can use to encapsulate citric acid modified
Fe3O4 nanoparticles. The successful preparation of CUR-loaded nano-carriers was confirmed
by X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning
calorimetry (DSC), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), vibrating sample
magnetometer (VSM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques. Moreover,
the hemolysis test was used for the study of hemobiocompatibility. The loading capacity
and encapsulation efficiency of CUR molecules were 11±0.09% and 49.5±0.41%, respectively.
The anticancer effect of the void of CUR and CUR-loaded nano-carriers were compared
by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay on the treated
MCF-7 cell lines. It can be concluded that the use of these nanoparticles are a better
and more efficient approach for the controlled and slow release of CUR in the cancer
treatment.
Keywords
chitosan - citric acid - drug delivery - curcumin - magnetic nanoparticles