Carbon nanotube based betulin formulation shows better efficacy against Leishmania parasite

Highlight
- We report drug formulation of betulin (BET) attached to carbon nanotubes (f-CNTs).
- The drug release profile of formulation demonstrated a fairly slow release of BET.
- The formulation has better antileishmanial activity and low toxicity.

We report a novel antileishmanial formulation of betulin (BET) attached to functionalized carbon nanotubes (f-CNTs). We conjugated betulin, a pentacyclic triterpenoid secondary metabolite, to carboxylic acid chains on f-CNTs to obtain BET attached functionalized carbon nanotubes (f-CNT-Bet). The drug release profile demonstrated a fairly slow release of BET. The in-vitro cytotoxicities of BET, f-CNT and f-CNT-BET on J774A.1 macrophage cell line were 211.05 ± 7.14 μg/ml; 24.67 ± 3.11 μg/ml and 72.63 ± 6.14 μg/ml, respectively. The IC50 of BET and f-CNT-BET against intracellular Leishmania donovani amastigotes were 8.33 ± 0.41 μg/ml and 0.69 ± 0.08 μg/ml, respectively. The results demonstrate better antileishmanial efficiency of f-CNT-BET formulation than BET alone and with no significant cytotoxicity observed on host cells.

Carbon nanotube based betulin formulation shows better efficacy against Leishmania parasite.