One Pot Silica Nanoparticle Modification and Doxorubicin Encapsulation as pH-Responsive Nanocarriers, Applying PEG/Lysine Aqueous Two Phase System

Providing an efficient system for drug delivery and chemotherapy has always been an important issue. Here, we have presented an aqueous two-phase system (ATPS) based on polyethylene glycol and lysine, which can partition doxorubicin (DOX) as an anticancer drug successfully. Addition of SiO2 nanoparticles to ATPS increased the partitioning of doxorubicin (DOX) as an anticancer drug from 47.92 in the absence of nanoparticles to 92.33 due to interactions between drug and nanoparticles. This novel biocompatible ATPS simultaneously modified the surface of SiO2 nanoparticles and loaded doxorubicin (DOX) on the modified SiO2 using hydrogen bonding interactions in one pot. Modification of the surface of SiO2 provides an opportunity for achieving a stimulus-sensitive drug delivery system. The formation of nanoformulation and its characteristics were investigated using microscopy, spectroscopy, and thermal analysis. Drug release study demonstrated that DOX is loaded on nanoformulations efficiently with an encapsulation efficiency of 63.84% and shows lower release in physiological environment compared to the unmodified nanoparticles. While in acidic conditions of pH 5.5, a significant increase was observed in the release profile. MTT assay on MCF-7 cancer cells confirmed that the nanoformulations were non-toxic and DOXloaded nanocarrier showed anticancer behavior. These results indicate that the prepared nanoformulations are promising nanocarriers for controlled drug release purposes. (C) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.