Curcumin-loaded guanidine functionalized PEGylated I3ad mesoporous silica nanoparticles KIT-6: Practical strategy for the breast cancer therapy

• Guanidine functionalized PEGylated mesoporous silica nanoparticles KIT-6 was prepared.
• Efficiency of [Gu@PEGylated KIT-6] was evaluated in curcumin delivery to breast cancer cells.
• It showed pH-responsive controlled and highly programmed release in vitro breast cancer therapy.
• The pure nanoparticles have no cytotoxicity against MCF-7, 4T1, and MCF10A.
• Biocompatibility, high loading and controllability make it a robust tool in biomedicine usages.

In this research, we have synthesized guanidine functionalized PEGylated mesoporous silica nanoparticles as a novel and efficient drug delivery system (DDS). For this purpose, guanidine functionalized PEGylated I3ad mesoporous silica nanoparticle KIT-6 [Gu@PEGylated KIT-6] was utilized as a promising system for the effective delivery of curcumin into the breast cancer cells. The modified mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) was fully characterized by different techniques such as transmission and scanning electron microscopy (TEM & SEM), N2 adsorption-desorption measurement, thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), and dynamic light scattering (DLS). The average particle size of [Gu@PEGylated KIT-6] and curcumin loaded [Gu@PEGylated KIT-6] nanoparticles were about 60 and 70 nm, respectively. This new system exhibited high drug loading capacity, sustained drug release profile, and high and long term anticancer efficacy in human cancer cell lines. It showed pH-responsive controlled characteristics and highly programmed release of curcumin leading to the satisfactory results in in vitro breast cancer therapy. Our results depicted that the pure nanoparticles have no cytotoxicity against human breast adenocarcinoma cells (MCF-7), mouse breast cancer cells (4T1), and human mammary epithelial cells (MCF10A).

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