Developing targeted delivery nanosystems
for delivering chemotherapeutic
anticancer drugs specifically to cancerous tissues with improvement
in the specificity of drugs for different cancer cells can result
in high therapeutic efficacy and low toxicity in healthy tissues.
Herein, we proposed the synthesis of a multifunctional nanodelivery
system, folic acid (FA) decorating nanographene oxide (nGO) functionalized
with poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), called pGO-FA, with good biocompatibility
and good delivering performance of a hydrophobic water-insoluble anticancer
drug of paclitaxel (PTX). 4-br-PEG-NH2, FA, and PTX were
attached to PEG-functionalized nGO (pGO) through a combined chemical
and physical force to form a nanosized complex, pGO-FA-PTX, defined
as the nanodrug system. WST-8 assay in vitro illustrated that pGO-FA-PTX
inhibited A2780 cells in a concentration-dependent manner. Cell viability
was kept high to 60% when treated with 200 nM of free PTX. However,
pGO-FA-PTX with the same dose of PTX (cell viability less than 30%)
had double the cytotoxicity effect compared to free PTX. Furthermore,
fluorescence observation demonstrated that pGO-FA-PTX exhibited an
improved efficiency in killing A2780 cells due to the special affinity
between FA and FA receptor, which has high expression in cancer cells.
The strategy and method used in this study could be effective in improving
both the bioavailability of PTX and therapy efficiency.
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