pH-Responsive Aloe Vera Hydrogels Loaded with Imatinib for Targeting Drug Resistance in Cancer

Abstract

Cancer and its reoccurrence have become a major health problem affecting the quality of life for millions of individuals every year. The currently available strategies, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy have non-specific targets, lower solubility, and severe side effects. Hydrogels are crosslinked polymeric networks with higher swelling properties, degradation, biocompatibility, and flexibility which can be manipulated based on the desired application. Incorporating AV can elevate the antioxidant, and anticancer properties of the hydrogel based drug delivery system (DDS) also warranting enhanced swelling, drug release, and environmental degradability of the system. Acrylic acid (AA) induces pH-responsive properties in the hydrogels. The PVA/SA and PVA/SA/AV hydrogels were synthesized with a pH responsive behavior and investigated at different pH conditions. The unloaded and loaded PVA/SA and PVA/SA/AV hydrogels with imatinib (IM) were characterized for their structural morphology, physiochemical characteristics, and antioxidant and anticancer activity. The IM loaded PVA/SA/AV hydrogels showed increased pore size in SEM micrographs, enhanced swelling abilities up to 400%, 100% degradation, 56% encapsulation efficiency, and drug release profiles of up to 94% in 24 h, compared to PVA/SA hydrogels loaded with IM. Dpph radical scavenging activity was also observed to be enhanced in PVA/SA/AV hydrogels. Finally, the cell viability analysis in resistant MCF-7 breast cancer cell lines exhibited 41% cell viability of the PVA/SA/AV hydrogels loaded with IM implying a promising potential of AV to be incorporated in a hydrogel based drug delivery system for targeting drug resistance in cancer.