Hydrophobically modified sodium alginate conjugated plasmonic magnetic nanocomposites for drug delivery & magnetic resonance imaging

Abstract

We report the synthesis of multifunctional plasmonic magnetic nanocomposites of iron oxide and gold. Sodium alginate is thiolated and grafted with hydrophobic amine-terminated poly butyl methacrylate (PBMA-NH2). The nanocomposites are conjugated with PBMA-NH2 grafted thiolated sodium alginate (TSA) for dispersion stability and enhancing the encapsulation efficiency (EE) of anti-cancer drugs. The nanocomposites are physico-chemically characterized and their contrast properties for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in phantom agarose gel are evaluated. The nanocomposites exhibit a reduction in transverse relaxation time (T2) from 94 milliseconds to 5.8 milliseconds on increasing the concentration of the nanocomposites (corresponding to 0.5 µg/mL to 50 µg/mL of iron). Paclitaxel (PTX) is encapsulated in the nanocomposites coated with hydrophobically modified TSA and an increment of 9% in EE is achieved as compared to the nanocomposites coated with TSA alone. PTX loaded nanocomposites offer higher efficacy (∼10 %) as compared to PTX on PLC/PRF/5 human hepatocellular carcinoma cells.