Nowadays, one of the most important reasons of death in the world is cancer. With the development of nanotechnology, advanced methods for treatment of cancer have introduced. In this work, the fluorescent carbon dots (CDs) were prepared from chitosan as the second abundant polysaccharide present in the nature. The surface of CDs was modified with chitosan (CDs/CS) and then the amino groups of chitosan were conjugated with activated folic acid (CDs/CS-FA) for controlled delivery of doxorubicin (DOX) as anticancer drug against HeLa cancer cells. The DOX loading efficiency of fluorescent CDs/CS-FA was high and nearly 60 %. Due to pH sensitive swelling/deswelling of CS, the percentage of cumulative DOX release could reach 90 % at cancer tissue (pH of 5.0) and 52 % at normal tissue (pH of 7.4) within 30 h. The cytotoxicity study revealed that the synthesized CDs were highly compatible on HeLa cells with cell viability 97-88 %. Cellular imaging shows that the entry of CDs/CS-FA to HeLa cells causes a green fluorescence, while the CDs/CS without FA have a negligible fluorescence. These results are due to the important role of FA in cell internalization. Thus, the CDs/CS-FA nanocarrier is suitable candidate for controlled pH sensitive drug delivery and cellular imaging.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2023.127728DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

drug delivery
8
hela cells
8
cellular imaging
8
fluorescent folic
4
folic acid-chitosan/carbon
4
acid-chitosan/carbon dot
4
dot ph-responsive
4
ph-responsive drug
4
delivery bioimaging
4
bioimaging nowadays
4

Similar Publications

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!