Multifunctional Drug Nanosystems: A Summary of Recent Researches at IMS/VAST

Abstract

The main task of nanomedicine is to fabricate, normally by chemical engineering, nanoscale systems that can play various functions of both diagnosis and treatment. This report aims to present some researches, carried out by the Laboratory of Biomedical Nanomaterials (IMS/VAST in Hanoi), on fabrication and characterization of nanovectors for the disease of cancer. The first part deals with magnetite (Fe₃O₄) nanoparticles (MNPs) based nanoconjugates, functionalized by coating with several polymers as well as loaded with a drug of curcumin. The used MNPs were obtained by co-precipitation, exhibited spherical shape of diameter of 15-20 nm, saturation magnetization of M_s ~ 65-70 emu/g. The coating polymers were acrylic acid (PAA), chitosan (CS) and Alginate (Alg) which were confirmed using the infrared (FTIR) spectra. Magnetic Inductive Heating (MIH) measurements demonstrated that the fabricated MNPs-based conjugates exhibited quite high heating performance, perspective for hyperthermia application. The application of Fe₃O₄@PAA for in-vivo hyperthermia treatment of cancer incubated on mice will be shown. As for imaging application, the Fe₃O₄@CS@Cur was used to demonstrate a dual possibilities, fluorescence and magnetic resonance, of monitoring cell penetration by macrophage. In the second part, we show a recent study on targeted delivery systems of paclitaxel/doxorubicin/curcumin-loaded copolymer/polymer nanoparticles, which were prepared by a modified solvent extraction/evaporation technique and decorated by folic acid. The obtained spherical nanoparticles were negatively charged with a zeta potential of about − 30 mV with the size around 50 nm and a narrow size distribution. The targeting effect of anticancer-drugs nanoparticles with folate decoration was investigated in vitro by the uptake in cancer cell lines and in nude mouse. The results indicate that the targeted paclitaxel/doxorubicin/curcumin-loaded copolymer/polymer nanoparticles are successful anticancer-targeted drug delivery system for effective cancer chemotherapy.