TÜBİTAK TBAG Proje01.07.2012Conventional cancer chemotherapies cannot differentiate between healthy and cancer cells, and lead to severe side effects and systemic toxicity. In the last decades, different kinds of controlled drug delivery systems have been developed to overcome these shortcomings of chemotherapeutics. These studies aim targeted drug delivery to tumor side at the right time. Magnetic nanoparticles (MNP) are potentially important in cancer treatment since they can be targeted to tumor site by an externally applied magnetic field. In this study, firstly MNP were synthesized. Obtained particles were covered with biocompatible polyethylene glycol (PEG); and then conjugated with folic acid. Anticancer drug idarubicin was loaded to nanoparticles and drug release studies were performed. Shape and size, crystal and chemical structures, and magnetic properties of synthesized nanoparticles were characterized. Agglomeration tendency of naked nanoparticles was prevented to a reasonable degree by oleic acid addition during the synthesis. All synthesized MNP have been found to exhibit superparamagnetic behavior at 23˚C and 37˚C. Cytotoxic effects of MNP were investigated on MCF-7 breast cancer cell line. Before drug loading, MNP did not have any toxicity in the concentration ranges of 0 – 500 µg/ml while drug loaded nanoparticles led to significant toxicity in a concentration dependent manner. Idarubicin loaded to MNP exhibited more toxicity compared to free idarubicin on MCF-7 cells. Endocytosis of MNP was illustrated by light and confocal microscopy images. The synthesized nanoparticles have been found to be suitable in terms of size, shape, magnetic and cytotoxic properties for drug targeting or other biomedical applications. The obtained results are expected to contribute to in vitro and in vivo cancer chemotherapy studies
