Improvements in Drug-Delivery Properties by Co-Encapsulating Curcumin in SN-38-Loaded Anticancer Polymeric Nanoparticles.

SN-38 is an immensely potent anticancer agent although its use necessitates encapsulation to overcome issues of poor solubility and stability. Since SN-38 is a notoriously challenging drug to encapsulate, new avenues to increase encapsulation efficiency in polymer nanoparticles (PNPs) are needed. In this paper, we show that nanoprecipitation with curcumin (CUR) increases SN-38 encapsulation efficiencies in coloaded SN-38/CUR-PNPs based on poly(ε-caprolactone)--poly(ethylene glycol) (PCL--PEG) by up to a factor of 10.