FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF CURCUMIN LOADED MAGNETIC NANOPARTICLES FOR CANCER THERAPY

The conventional chemotherapeutic agents in oncology drug discovery still exhibit poor specificity in reaching tumor site and often restricted by dose-limiting toxicity. The combination of developing drug formulation by utilizing both controlled release technology and drug targeting technology may provide a more efficient and less harmful solution to conquer the limitations found in conventional chemotherapy. In this study, the anticancer drug curcumin was encapsulated in a polymeric magnetic nanoparticle which was synthesized with polymers β-cyclodextrin cross linked with epichlorhydrin, hydrophobically modified dextran byoleoylchloride and magnetite as magnetic material. Particle size, surface morphology, zeta potential and magnetic measurements were used to characterize the developed drug formulations. The developed drug-iron conjugated nanoparticles were found to be within the size range of 100nm with excellent negative surface charge (>-30eV) and spherical in shape. The magnetic susceptibility and magnetization curve substantiate the super paramagnetic property of the developed drug formulation. Furthermore, the drug content and encapsulation efficiency found was directly proportional to epichlorhydrin β-cyclodextrin concentration in the developed formulation. The in-vitro release profile of curcumin loaded magnetic nanoparticles exhibited biphasic initial release first 24 hours and release extended upto 72 hours. The drug release kinetics indicated that drug release from drug formulations were best explained by Higuchi’s equation, as these plots showed the highest linearity but a close relationship was also noted with first-order kinetics.