Synthesis and Characterization of Silk Fibroin- Coated Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles for Tioguanine Targeting to Leukemia

Abstract

Mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) are known as carriers with high loading capacity and large functionalizable surface area for target-directed delivery. In this work, large pore size MSNs were prepared by the co-condensation method. Tioguanine (TG) as a hydrophobic drug was loaded into the synthesized MSNs to prepare TG@MSNs. The results show MSNs were successfully synthesized and they have good loading efficiency and capacity for TG. Silk fibroin (SF) as an active targeting agent and pH-sensitive targeting release, is a natural protein from silkworm cocoons. It was used to coating MSNs to prepare SF/TG@MSNs. SF was Degummed and it was characterized by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) methods. The MSNs were fully characterized by FESEM, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), zeta potential analysis, dynamic light scattering (DLS), nitrogen adsorption/desorption analysis, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, FTIR and UV-visible spectroscopies. The mechanism of TG release from SF/TG@MSNs were pH-sensitive. The in vitro release modeling revealed that TG released via the Higuchi model with fickian diffusion mechanism. In conclusion, SF/TG@MSNs exhibited a well synthesized and good payload for use in targeted drug delivery for leukemia.