Antitumor efficacy of a PLGA composite nanofiber embedded with doxorubicin@MSNs and hydroxycamptothecin@HANPs

A co-delivery system with two or more anticancer drugs has been proposed to minimize the dosage of drug and to achieve the synergistic therapeutic effect in cancer therapy. In this study, we present a dual drug delivery system for the co-release of two anticancer drugs doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX) and hydroxycamptothecin (CPT). To achieve this goal, DOX and CPT were first separately loaded into mesoporous silica and hydroxyapatite nanocarriers, thus, the two prepared drug loaded nanocarriers were then simultaneously incorporated into poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) nanofibers by electrospinning. The as-prepared medicated nanofibers were well-characterized by different assays, and the results demonstrated that both of the two drug loaded nanocarriers were successfully incorporated into PLGA nanofibers. The in vitro release study indicated that the loaded DOX and CPT exhibited a sustained and controlled release behavior from the dual drug loaded nanofibers. Furthermore, the dual drug loaded nanofibers displayed a superior capacity of inhibiting HeLa cells in vitro to the single drug loaded PLGA nanofibers. Thus, the synthesized dual drug loaded composite nanofibers may find a promising application for cancer therapy.