Synthesis of core-shell structure based on silica nanoparticles and methacrylic acid via RAFT method: An efficient pH-sensitive hydrogel for prolonging doxorubicin release

Abstract

In recent years, much attention has been received on stimuli-responsive nanocarriers in nanomedicine. In this work, a pH-responsive core-shell system based on silica nanoparticles (SNPs) as core and methacrylic acid hydrogels as shell were synthesized via reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization. Methacrylic acid hydrogel through bulk and RAFT polymerization was developed as a model to compare with core-shell hydrogel. The synthesized nanocarriers were characterized by TGA, FT-IR, SEM, TEM, and DLS techniques. To investigate the synthesized core-shell nanoparticles as anticancer nanocarriers, Doxorubicin (DOX) was used as a model drug. In-vitro drug release manner at physiological barriers (pH 7.4) and cancer cell conditions (pH 4.8) illustrates a pH-controlled release for the nanocarriers over 15 days. The study of drug release kinetics reveals that the release mechanism of the carriers followed by the Gompertz model. In addition, the DOX-loaded nanocarriers have notable cytotoxicity against human breast MCF-7 cells with 0.7866 μM IC50 for core-shell nanocarrier. The obtained results showed that the prepared pH-responsive core-shell hydrogel has a high potential to be employed as a sustained pH-sensitive drug release system.