Abstract
The aim was to isolate cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) from commercialized oil palm empty fruit bunch cellulose nanofibre (CNF) through sulphuric acid hydrolysis and explore its safeness as a potential nanocarrier. Successful extraction of CNC was confirmed through a field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) and attenuated total reflection Fourier transmission infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectrometry analysis. For subsequent cellular uptake study, the spherical CNC was covalently tagged with fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC), resulting in negative charged FITC-CNC nanospheres with a dispersity (Ð) of 0.371. MTT assay revealed low degree cytotoxicity for both CNC and FITC-CNC against C6 rat glioma and NIH3T3 normal fibroblasts up to 50 µg/mL. FITC conjugation had no contribution to the particle’s toxicity. Through confocal laser scanning microscope (CLSM), synthesized FITC-CNC manifested negligible cellular accumulation, indicating a poor non-selective adsorptive endocytosis into studied cells. Overall, an untargeted CNC-based nanosphere with less cytotoxicity that posed poor selectivity against normal and cancerous cells was successfully synthesized. It can be considered safe and suitable to be developed into targeted nanocarrier.
Highlights
Cancer is a group of diseases characterized by the unstoppable proliferation of abnormal cells.Until today, the cure for cancer has yet to be found
ATR-FTIR analysis was carried out to detect the changes in chemical composition between cellulose nanofibre (CNF), CNF, and fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)-cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) to further confirm CNC isolation and FITC conjugation
After washing with Phosphate Buffer Saline (PBS), cells were viewed under the Nikon A1+ Confocal Laser Scanning Microscope (Nikon Instrument Inc., Melville, NY, USA) using DAPI, tetramethylrhodamine isothiocyanate (TRITC), and FITC filters
Summary
Cancer is a group of diseases characterized by the unstoppable proliferation of abnormal cells. By applying active or targeted drug delivery, it was proposed that the regime dose can be lowered as selective uptake by cancer cells is expected If this approach is a success, patient compliance could be improved since lesser side effects are projected by the healthy cells [5]. In order to achieve similar length normalized curvature, the non-spherical nanoparticles need to interact with the cell membrane at specific contact orientation [13] Since this occurrence happens at random, non-spherical nanoparticle exhibit cellular internalization at a lesser extent compared to the nanosphere. Present study attempted to improvise the synthesis method of spherical FITC-CNC using acid-hydrolyzed-CNC and study its cytotoxicity and cellular internalization into C6 and NIH3T3 fibroblast cells for potential anti-cancer drug nanocarrier application
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