"Smart" nickel oxide based core–shell nanoparticles for combined chemo and photodynamic cancer therapy

Abstract

Shazia Bano,1–3,* Samina Nazir,2,* Saeeda Munir,3 Mohamed Fahad AlAjmi,4 Muhammad Afzal,1 Kehkashan Mazhar3 1Department of Physics, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, 2Nanosciences and Technology Department, National Centre for Physics, Islamabad, 3Institute of Biomedical and Genetic Engineering, Islamabad, Pakistan; 4College of Pharmacy, King Saud University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia *These authors contributed equally to this work Abstract: We report “smart” nickel oxide nanoparticles (NOPs) as multimodal cancer therapy agent. Water-dispersible and light-sensitive NiO core was synthesized with folic acid (FA) connected bovine serum albumin (BSA) shell on entrapped doxorubicin (DOX). The entrapped drug from NOP-DOX@BSA-FA was released in a sustained way (64 hours, pH=5.5, dark conditions) while a robust release was found under red light exposure (in 1/2 hour under λmax=655 nm, 50 mW/cm2, at pH=5.5). The cell viability, thiobarbituric acid reactive substances and diphenylisobenzofuran assays conducted under light and dark conditions revealed a high photodynamic therapy potential of our construct. Furthermore, we found that the combined effect of DOX and NOPs from NOP-DOX@BSA-FA resulted in cell death approximately eightfold high compared to free DOX. We propose that NOP-DOX@BSA-FA is a potential photodynamic therapy agent and a collective drug delivery system for the systemic administration of cancer chemotherapeutics resulting in combination therapy. Keywords: light-triggered drug release, cancer, bovine serum albumin, multi-model therapy

Keywords

• NiO
• light-triggered drug release
• combination therapy
• cancer
• chemo-photodynamic treatment