PH and reduction dual-responsive feather keratin - sodium alginate nanogels with high drug loading capacity for tumor-targeting DOX delivery

Abstract

As a natural polymer, there are a lot of functional groups on the keratin molecular chains, such as carboxyl, amino and hydroxyl groups. In the present study, we used keratin (K) as a multifunctional crosslinker and prepared smart nanogels. The nanogels had high loading capacity for drug, while low drug leakage. The surface of the DOX@K/SA-NG is negatively charged and the size was determined to be 432 nm. The nanogels had drug loading capacity (DLC) of 65.2% (w/w) and were capable of triggering drug release upon both pH and reductive (glutathione (GSH)) environment while stable under physiological conditions (pH 7.4 + 10 μM GSH). We evaluated its cancer treatment performance through cell uptake and cytotoxicity experiments, it showed that the prepared DOX@K/SA-NG can effectively inhibit the growth of HepG2 cancer cells.