A first principles study of pristine and Al-doped boron nitride nanotubes interacting with platinum-based anticancer drugs

Interaction of cis-platin and neda-platin, two conventional platinum-based anticancer drugs, with pristine [8,8] and Al-doped [8,0] boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) are investigated using the density functional theory (DFT) method. The obtained results indicate that cis-platin and neda-platin weakly interact with pristine zig zag or armchair BNNTs with a little dependency on the adsorbing positions; while both cis-platin and neda-platin are preferentially adsorbed onto the Al atom of the Al-doped BNNT with considerable adsorption energies. Therefore the Al-doped-BNNT might be an efficient carrier for delivery of these drugs in nanomedicine domain. The electronic structures of the stable configurations are also investigated through both DOS and PDOS spectra. The obtained results introduce the Al-doped-BNNT as an efficient carrier for delivery of cis-platin and neda-platin in nanomedicine domain.