Preparation and Characterization of Poly(ethylene glycol)-Doxorubicin/SPION Magnetic Nanoparticles for Cancer Therapy

In this study, an amphiphilic polymer-drug conjugate was synthesized by chemical conjugation of a hydrophilic polymer poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) with a hydrophobic anticancer agent, doxorubicin (DOX), to prepare magnetic nanoparticles for cancer diagnosis and therapy. The amphiphilic PEG-DOX polymer could self-assemble in the aqueous solution to form nanoparticles (NPs) and efficiently encapsulated superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPION) with high loading capacity and loading efficiency. The resulting SPION encapsulated PEG-DOX (PEG-DOX/SPION) NPs were observed to have an average size of similar to 100 nm with a narrow and unimodal size distribution and demonstrated the characteristic of MR contrast agent from the phantom experiments. In the toxicity assessment, PEG-DOX/SPION NPs showed lower toxicity than pristine DOX, and no mortality was detected at the maximum MTD. As a result, these magnetic NPs with high contents of DOX and SPION could be utilized as a theragnostic formulation for efficient cancer diagnosis and therapy, due to their diverse potential capacities properties, such as low toxicity, MR imaging character, passive and magnetic targeting properties, and so on.