Planar polymer-graphene oxide nanohybrid as a 5-fluorouacil carrier in pH-responsive controlled release

•Tannic acid as a tannin was exploited to prepare a planar nanohybrid.•Planar nanohybrid was a pH-responsive carrier for controlled drug delivery of 5-Fu.•Nanohybrid had a faster and more release in acidic pH = 5.8 up to about 74%.•Degradation of nanohybrid was drastic in acidic medium and suitable for chemotherapy.

The aim of current study was to develop a pH-responsive controlled release system of a cancer drug (5-fluorouracil) by the use of a planar nanohybrid to reduce the dosing frequency and consequently improve the patient compliance. This nanohybrid was developed by taking advantage of graphene oxide sheets as a support and poly(ethyleneimine) and tannic acid as materials to encapsulate the drug molecules. The release rates of this cancer drug molecule from the nanohybrid were significantly sensitive to the existence of H+ ions in the environmental solution (74% in pH = 5.8 and 59% in pH = 7.4). In phosphate buffered saline solution, the release of 5-fluorouracil from the nanohybrid was fast in the earliest time but stayed steady after few hours. The degradation experiments revealed that the collapse of this nanohybrid is drastic in pH = 5.8 during 10 days.

Graphical abstractDownload high-res image (384KB)Download full-size image