A Novel pH-Responsive Magnetic Nanosystem for Delivery of Anticancer Drugs

A novel pH-responsive magnetic nanosystem was designed and developed for cancer therapy. For this purpose, a well-defined terpolymer was synthesized through the polymerization of 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) monomer using reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) technique and simultaneous grafting of ε-caprolactone (ε-CL) monomer via ring-opening polymerization (ROP) approach followed by block copolymerization of acrylic acid (AA) monomer via RAFT polymerization method, in order to produce a poly(acrylic acid)-block-[poly(2-oxyethyl methacrylate)-grafted-poly(ε-caprolactone)] [PAA-b-(POEMA-g-PCL)]. Afterward, magnetite nanoparticles (Fe3O4 NPs) were synthesized through chemical co-precipitation method, and then incorporated into the developed terpolymer through physical interactions (e.g., electrostatic and hydrogen bonding) via solution mixing approach. The doxorubicin hydrochloride (Dox), as an anticancer model drug, loading (LE) and encapsulation (EE) efficiencies of the fabricated magnetic nanosystem were calculated to be 96 ± 5 and 9.65 ± 0.5%, respectively. The drug release study results revealed that the developed drug delivery system (DDS) could be efficiently control the delivery of Dox in response to pH stimuli.