Zinc forms of faujasite zeolites as a drug delivery system for 6-mercaptopurine

6-Mercaptopurine (MERC) is a chemotherapeutic drug with varying activity depending on the dose. MERC has been used to treat various diseases such as blood cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, or Crohn's disease. Unfortunately, current methods of administering this drug are characterized by poor bioavailability (about 16%). In this work, carriers for mercaptopurine based on X and Y-type zinc zeolites were developed for the first time. The prepared carriers were well characterized by various research techniques (SEM/EDS, FTIR, and Elemental analysis). The research confirms that the drug was trapped on the surface through coordination interactions between zinc cations and the sulfur and nitrogen atoms of the mercaptopurine molecule. The drug release profile particularly evidences this. "Burst release" of the drug from the carrier was not observed during the first hours of release. Instead, 30% of the drug was released from both carriers in the first 10 h. The rest were released in about 20 h. Both carriers were also characterized by a large amount of drug released (78% and 88%). The cytotoxicity study of the MCF-7 cell line at different concentrations for 72 h showed that MERC could be effectively released from materials. Moreover, both free-form zeolites did not affect cell viability and thus might be considered biocompatible carriers.