Sodium alginate–polyvinyl alcohol–bovin serum albumin coated Fe3O4 nanoparticles as anticancer drug delivery vehicle: Doxorubicin loading and in vitro release study and cytotoxicity to HepG2 and L02 cells

Abstract

The challenging part of this work was to research the potential aspects of sodium alginate (SA)–polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)–bovin serum albumin (BSA) coated Fe3O4 nanoparticles (Fe3O4-SA-PVA-BSA) as a drug delivery system for doxorubicin (DOX). The anticancer drug doxorubicin was selected as a model drug which is powerful for numerous cancer treatments. Superparamagnetic Fe3O4 nanoparticles were prepared by co-precipitation method. The mixture solution of Fe3O4-sodium alginate (SA) - doxorubicin (DOX) was crosslinked with Ca2+ to form (Fe3O4-SA-DOX) nanoparticles and addition of PVA and BSA with (Fe3O4-SA-DOX) nanoparticles was prepared by coating procedure. Doxorubicin drug loaded NPs were prepared by a simple crosslinking method by calcium chloride solution. The prepared polymer coated magnetic nanoparticles (Fe3O4-SA-PVA-BSA) were characterized by using SEM, AFM, FT-IR, XRD and VSM. The mean sizes of the obtained drug loaded nanoparticles (Fe3O4-SA-DOX, Fe3O4-SA-DOX-PVA and Fe3O4-SA-DOX-PVA-BSA) were between 240±8.3 and 460±8.7nm and zeta potential of the particles also was evaluated using Malvern Zetasizer which ranged between −48.1±2.3 and −22.4±4.1mV. The encapsulation efficiency, was between 36.2±0.01 and 96.45±2.12. Moreover drug loading and drug release properties of the polymer coated magnetic nanoparticles loaded with doxorubicin (Fe3O4-SA-DOX-PVA-BSA) were also studied. In addition, the cytotoxicity of the created nanoparticles was performed by using MTT assay analysis which showed that DOX loaded nanoparticles (Fe3O4-SA-DOX-PVA-BSA) were toxic to HepG2 cell lines and non-toxic to L02 cell lines. The in-vitro drug release was studied by using UV–Visible spectrophotometer at acidic environment (pH5.0) and basic environment (pH7.4) as well as at different temperatures (37°C and 42°C). It was found that DOX drug is released much faster in acidic environment (pH5.0) than in the basic environment (pH7.4). The results propose that prepared polymer coated magnetic (Fe3O4-SA-PVA-BSA) nanoparticles are suitable for controlled and targeted release of anticancer drugs reducing side effects and attaining higher efficacy.