Synergic Effect of Novel WS2 Carriers Holding Spherical Cobalt Ferrite @cubic Fe3O4 (WS2/s-CoFe2O4@c-Fe3O4) Nanocomposites in Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Photothermal Therapy for Ocular Treatments and Investigation of Corneal Endothelial Cell Migration.

Abstract

The design of novel materials to use simultaneously in an ocular system for driven therapeutics and wound healing is still challenging. Here, we produced nanocomposites of tungsten disulfide carriers with spherical cobalt ferrite nanoparticles (NPs) as core inside a cubic iron oxide NPs shell (WS2/s-CoFe2O4@c-Fe3O4). Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) confirmed that 10 nm s-CoFe2O4@c-Fe3O4 NPs were attached on the WS2 sheet surfaces. The cytotoxicity of the WS2 sheets and nanocomposites were evaluated on bovine cornea endothelial cells (BCECs) using 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay for a duration of three days. The MTT assay results showed low toxicity of the WS2 sheets on BCECs by 67% cell viability at 100 μg/mL in 24 h, while the nanocomposites show 50% cell viability in the same conditions. The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of nanocomposites revealed the excellent T2-weighted imaging with an r2 contrast of 108 mM−1 S−1. The in vitro photothermal therapy based on WS2 sheets and WS2/s-CoFe2O4 @c-Fe3O4 nanocomposites using 808 nm laser showed that the maximum thermal energy dispatched in medium at different applied power densities (1200 mw, 1800, 2200, 2600 mW) was for 0.1 mg/mL of the sample solution. The migration assay of BCECs showed that the wound healing was approximately 20% slower for the cell exposed by nanocomposites compared with the control (no exposed BCECs). We believe that WS2/s-CoFe2O4@c-Fe3O4 nanocomposites have a synergic effect as photothermal therapy agents for eye diseases and could be a target in an ocular system using MRI.