A novel stimuli-responsive magnetic hydrogel based on nature-inspired tragacanth gum for chemo/hyperthermia treatment of cancerous cells

An efficient and facile strategy for the fabrication of a bioinspired drug delivery system (DDS) was designed and developed successfully based on tragacanth gum (TG) owing to its wide range of biological and pharmacological activities (e.g., anti-tumor). For this objective, the reduced TG (TG-OH) was tosylated (TG-OTs), and then 2-ethyl-2-oxazoline (EtOx) monomer was grafted onto purified TG through a cationic ring-opening polymerization (CROP) technique. The polymerization was terminated and simultaneously crosslinked by the addition of amine-modified Fe3O4 nanoparticles and cystamine (Cys) moiety to afford a TG-g-PEtOx/Fe3O4 as a pH- and reduction-sensitive magnetic hydrogel (MH). The fabricated MH exhibited excellent doxorubicin hydrochloride (Dox) encapsulation efficiency (83.1 +/- 3.1) owing to its porous micro-structure and robust physical interactions between the drug molecule and polymeric network. In vitro drug release studies results confirmed the pH- and reduction-responsiveness of the developed MH/Dox system. The anticancer performance study by MTT-assay revealed that the developed MH/Dox has excellent potential for "smart" chemo/hyperthermia therapy of cancerous cells.