Design and construction of polymerized-chitosan coated Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles and its application for hydrophobic drug delivery

In this study, a novel hydrogel, chitosan (CS) crosslinked carboxymethyl-β-cyclodextrin (CM-β-CD) polymer modified Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles was synthesized for delivering hydrophobic anticancer drug 5-fluorouracil (CS-CDpoly-MNPs). Carboxymethyl-β-cyclodextrin being grafted on the Fe3O4 nanoparticles (CDpoly-MNPs) contributed to an enhancement of adsorption capacities because of the inclusion abilities of its hydrophobic cavity with insoluble anticancer drugs through host–guest interactions. Experimental results indicated that the amounts of crosslinking agent and bonding times played a crucial role in determining morphology features of the hybrid nanocarriers. The nanocarriers exhibited a high loading efficiency (44.7 ± 1.8%) with a high saturation magnetization of 43.8 emu/g. UV–Vis spectroscopy results showed that anticancer drug 5-fluorouracil (5-Fu) could be successfully included into the cavities of the covalently linked CDpoly-MNPs. Moreover, the free carboxymethyl groups could enhance the bonding interactions between the covalently linked CDpoly-MNPs and anticancer drugs. In vitro release studies revealed that the release behaviors of CS-CDpoly-MNPs carriers were pH dependent and demonstrated a swelling and diffusion controlled release. A lower pH value led to swelling effect and electrostatic repulsion contributing to the protonation amine impact of NH3+, and thus resulted in a higher release rate of 5-Fu. The mechanism of 5-Fu encapsulated into the magnetic chitosan nanoparticles was tentatively proposed.