Enhancing anti-cancer efficacy of carboplatin by PEGylated poly(butyl cyanoacrylate) nano-particles

Abstract

Nano-drug delivery holds great potential to enhance the efficacy of carboplatin. This study focused on cytotoxicity, in vitro drug release and characterization of poly(butyl cyanoacrylate) (PBCA) nano-particles (NPs) loaded with carboplatin. As the novelty mini-emulsion polymerization is applied to synthesize PBCA NPs coated with hydrophilic polymer polyethylene glycol-3350 (PEG) to enhance NPs properties and improve the treatment efficacy of carboplatin on ovarian cancer cell lines. Ovarian cancer cell lines are used to determine nano-drug efficiency using MTT assay. NPs have zeta potential of −10.7 mV and average size 389 nm. Entrapment efficiency and drug loading of NPs are reported 41.43% and 3.59%, respectively. Drug release from NPs has less slope compared to free carboplatin release profile. Result shows that PEGylated NPs have higher drug retention capability with 14% of the drug released after 38 h. In addition, drug release rate and entrapment efficiency increases in time dependent manner. Moreover, our finding illustrates that using PEG in NPs formulation and the producing technique have a pivotal impact on the characteristics of NPs, loading rate and entrapment efficiency. Furthermore, results show that adding PEG to NPs formulation helps to enhance properties of NPs and results in minimal changes in their characteristics over time. Moreover, carboplatin cytotoxicity correlates with the drug concentration that is considerably increased in PEGylated NPs.