Abstract
Nanotechnology-based drug delivery systems are an emerging technology for the targeted delivery of chemotherapeutic agents in cancer therapy with low/no toxicity to the non-cancer cells. With that view, the present work reports the synthesis, characterization, and testing of Mn:ZnS quantum dots (QDs) conjugated chitosan (CS)-based nanocarrier system encapsulated with Mitomycin C (MMC) drug. This fabricated nanocarrier, MMC@CS-Mn:ZnS, has been tested thoroughly for the drug loading capacity, drug encapsulation efficiency, and release properties at a fixed wavelength (358 nm) using a UV–Vis spectrophotometer. Followed by the physicochemical characterization, the cumulative drug release profiling data of MMC@CS-Mn:ZnS nanocarrier (at pH of 6.5, 6.8, 7.2, and 7.5) were investigated to have the highest release of 56.48% at pH 6.8, followed by 50.22%, 30.88%, and 10.75% at pH 7.2, 6.5, and 7.5, respectively. Additionally, the drug release studies were fitted to five different pharmacokinetic models including pesudo-first-order, pseudo-second-order, Higuchi, Hixson–Crowell, and Korsmeyers–Peppas models. From the analysis, the cumulative MMC release suits the Higuchi model well, revealing the diffusion-controlled mechanism involving the correlation of cumulative drug release proportional to the function square root of time at equilibrium, with the correlation coefficient values (R2) of 0.9849, 0.9604, 0.9783, and 0.7989 for drug release at pH 6.5, 6.8, 7.2, and 7.5, respectively. Based on the overall results analysis, the formulated nanocarrier system of MMC synergistically envisages the efficient delivery of chemotherapeutic agents to the target cancerous sites, able to sustain it for a longer time, etc. Consequently, the developed nanocarrier system has the capacity to improve the drug loading efficacy in combating the reoccurrence and progression of cancer in non-muscle invasive bladder diseases.
Highlights
IntroductionRecent years have witnessed the unprecedented growth of research and applications in the field of nanotechnology-based drug delivery systems (DDS), especially for cancer diagnostic and treatments, as cancer has been garnering tremendous interest because of its severity to cause death worldwide and threatening public health [1]
We present the first report on the formulation for Mitomycin C (MMC), that has been successfully encapsulated onto CS-Mn-doped ZnS (Mn):ZnS nanocomposite matrix, even though MMC is a water-soluble drug that suffers from the limitations of rapid or burst release in aqueous solutions
The absorption edges were observed at 300 and 290 nm for ZnS and Mn:ZnS, respectively, with a tail extending into the visible region, which indicates that the NPs are exhibiting good crystallinity and low defect density near the band edge [12]
Summary
Recent years have witnessed the unprecedented growth of research and applications in the field of nanotechnology-based drug delivery systems (DDS), especially for cancer diagnostic and treatments, as cancer has been garnering tremendous interest because of its severity to cause death worldwide and threatening public health [1]. Since the carcinogenesis process is tedious, it has limitation on treatment regiments, and requires more rigorous and comprehensive therapeutic plans. For example immunotherapy, phototherapy, gene therapy and hormone therapy, are Pharmaceutics 2021, 13, 1379. Pharmaceutics 2021, 13, 1379 emerging, the gold standard for cancer treatment goes to surgical intervention and chemotherapy [2]. It is noteworthy to mention that conventional chemotherapy is considered as a non-specific treatment that can simultaneously kill healthy cells and leads to systemic toxicity to the patients [3]. The quest for innovative technologies becomes an urgent necessity
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