Iron oxide (Fe3O4) has emerged as one of the appealing candidates

Iron oxide (Fe3O4) has emerged as one of the appealing candidates for drug delivery system [5] and magnetic fluorescence imaging [6, 7]. However, the aggregations of naked Fe3O4 NPs decrease their interfacial areas, thus resulting in the loss of magnetism

[8] and dispersibility [9]. Therefore, extensive work has been done to stabilize the NPs [10, 11]. Huang synthesized uniform Fe3O4@SiO2 NPs with well-controlled shell thickness [12]. Kaskel developed a homogeneous Fe3O4@SiO2 with hollow mesoporous structure for drug delivery [13]. Unfortunately, the common challenge among these applications is to ensure sufficient uptake of NPs by specific cells [14, 15]. The outer shell of silica not only protects the inner magnetite core from aggregation [16, 17] but also provides sites for flexible surface modification such as poly(ethylene glycol) to render NP biocompatibility by preventing the nonspecific adsorption of proteins [18] and RG7112 cell line Vistusertib mw various targeting biomolecules [19, 20] to improve the targeting efficiency. Kim reported Fe3O4@SiO2 NPs using CTAB as a template and PEG to prolong the short blood half-life of NPs [21]. However, the safety of drug carriers is one of the most critical factors to ensure its efficacy. Carboxymethyl chitosan (OCMCS) is a water-soluble chitosan which receives a great deal of interest because of favorable biocompatibility, safety,

nonimmunogenicity, as well as reasonable cost [22]. Shi reported the OCMCS-Fe3O4 easily internalized into cells via endocytosis [23]. Fan developed the Fe3O4 NPs with OCMCS which significantly NVP-BSK805 in vivo reduced the cytotoxicity and the capture of NPs. Moreover, folic acid (FA)-modified OCMCS-Fe3O4 NPs combined receptor-mediated targeting and magnetic targeting together [24]. It is noted that folic Isoconazole acid, as an effective target ligand [25, 26], shows high binding affinity with folate receptor, which over-expressed on the membranes of many human malignant cells, but limited on the normal cells. To the best of our knowledge, the general synthetic protocols

to combine silica with diverse functional modification used as a safe drug delivery system are seldom reported. With regard to the above effects, we develop a novel carboxymethyl chitosan-based, silica-coated iron oxide nanovehicle (Fe3O4@SiO2-OCMCS-FA) with dual-targeting function (magnetic/folate) in this study. Fe3O4 core serves as a carrier for magnetic targeting, while silica coating on the iron oxide NPs offers sites for further modifications. OCMCS-FA was conjugated firstly to perform a folate receptor (FR)-mediated cellular endocytose and acted as the biocompatible segment and then subsequently coupled through acylation to the surface of animated Fe3O4@SiO2 which was modified with (3-aminopropyl) triethoxysilane (APTES) to obtain the multifunctional nanovehicle (Fe3O4@SiO2-OCMCS-FA).

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