abstract
Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, and current therapeutic options present numerous side-effects. However, and due to the scientific and technological advances of the past years, a new approach to this dilemma appeared in nanomedicine, viz. the use of nanosystems capable of releasing anticancer drugs in a controlled way and only at the designated cells. Hence, the present work consisted in the synthesis and characterization of nanoparticles obtained by layer-by-layer assembly from amino-modified spherical silica (SiO2) templates. The alternate deposition of alginate (ALG) and chitosan (CH) or alginate and lysozyme nanofibrils (LNFs), on templates pre-loaded with curcumin allowed the creation of nanoparticles covered by ALG/CH and ALG/LNFs. The zeta-potential reversion and the scanning electron micrographs (SEM) confirmed the deposition of each biopolymeric layer. Furthermore, the release profile of the bioactive drug from the bi-layered nanoparticles was clearly more controlled than with the bare counterparts. Their cytotoxic capacity towards human liver cancer cell line (HepG2) was assessed by the in vitro MTT assay and the results showed that both curcumin-loaded bi-layered nanoparticles exhibited anticancer activity at concentrations of 50 μg/mL with cell viabilities lower than 70% after 24 hours.
authors
João Carvalho, Tiago Carvalho, Nuno H. C. S. Silva, Ricardo J. B. Pinto, Helena Oliveira, Carla Vilela, and Carmen S. R. Freire
our authors
