Sodium alginate-polyvinyl alcohol-bovin serum albumin coated Fe3O4 nanoparticles as anticancer drug delivery vehicle: Doxorubicin loading and in vitro release study and cytotoxicity to HepG2 and L02 cells

The challenging part of this work was to research the potential aspects of sodium alginate (SA)-polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)-bovin serum albumin (BSA) coated Fe3O4 nanoparticles (Fe3O4-SA-PVA-BSA) as a drug delivery system for doxorubicin (DOX). The anticancer drug doxorubicin was selected as a model drug which is powerful for numerous cancer treatments. Superparamagnetic Fe3O4 nanoparticles were prepared by co-precipitation method. The mixture solution of Fe3O4-sodium alginate (SA) - doxorubicin (DOX) was crosslinked with Ca2 + to form (Fe3O4-SA-DOX) nanoparticles and addition of PVA and BSA with (Fe3O4-SA-DOX) nanoparticles was prepared by coating procedure. Doxorubicin drug loaded NPs were prepared by a simple crosslinking method by calcium chloride solution. The prepared polymer coated magnetic nanoparticles (Fe3O4-SA-PVA-BSA) were characterized by using SEM, AFM, FT-IR, XRD and VSM. The mean sizes of the obtained drug loaded nanoparticles (Fe3O4-SA-DOX, Fe3O4-SA-DOX-PVA and Fe3O4-SA-DOX-PVA-BSA) were between 240 ± 8.3 and 460 ± 8.7 nm and zeta potential of the particles also was evaluated using Malvern Zetasizer which ranged between − 48.1 ± 2.3 and − 22.4 ± 4.1 mV. The encapsulation efficiency, was between 36.2 ± 0.01 and 96.45 ± 2.12. Moreover drug loading and drug release properties of the polymer coated magnetic nanoparticles loaded with doxorubicin (Fe3O4-SA-DOX-PVA-BSA) were also studied. In addition, the cytotoxicity of the created nanoparticles was performed by using MTT assay analysis which showed that DOX loaded nanoparticles (Fe3O4-SA-DOX-PVA-BSA) were toxic to HepG2 cell lines and non-toxic to L02 cell lines. The in-vitro drug release was studied by using UV-Visible spectrophotometer at acidic environment (pH 5.0) and basic environment (pH 7.4) as well as at different temperatures (37 °C and 42 °C). It was found that DOX drug is released much faster in acidic environment (pH 5.0) than in the basic environment (pH 7.4). The results propose that prepared polymer coated magnetic (Fe3O4-SA-PVA-BSA) nanoparticles are suitable for controlled and targeted release of anticancer drugs reducing side effects and attaining higher efficacy.