Abstract:
Magnetically controlled drug release is a promising alternative to conventional cancer treatment,
having the potential to improve the therapeutic effect and decrease side effects. Iron oxide
nanoparticles (IONPs) offer promising potential for magnetically controlled drug release due to
their superparamagnetic properties and tunable surface characteristics. By incorporating drugs into
or onto these nanoparticles and coating them with biocompatible polymers, such systems can be
created where drug release is triggered or modulated by external magnetic fields.
In this study IONPs were synthesized by co-precipitation method and functionalized with oleic
acid to incorporate hydrophobicity to them. An optimization study for the effect of amount of oleic
acid was conducted. For 1.2ml of oleic per 200mg of IONPs the hydrodynamic size of IONPs was
observed to be minimum i.e., 57nm±0.27. These optimized IONPs were encapsulated in
poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid), PLGA using Flash Nanoprecipitation. Flash nanoprecipitation is a
versatile and scalable technique used for the rapid and efficient encapsulation of hydrophobic
drugs or other compounds into nanoparticles. Initially, bare PLGA nanoparticles were made by
flash nanoprecipitation, after optimizing the conditions for bare PLGA nanoparticles, Paclitaxel
and IONPs were co-encapsulated in PLGA. The encapsulation was confirmed with different
characterization techniques such as STEM,EDX, FTIR and magneTherm. It was observed as the
concentration of IONPs in flash nanoprecipitation is increased from 1mg/ml to 3mg/ml more
encapsulated in PLGA. But for concentration 4mg/ml to 6mg/ml the IONPs precipitate faster than
PLGA and attach to the outside surface of PLGA instead of being encapsulated. Magnetically
controlled drug release was studied using the magneTherm. The results indicated that it is possible
to co-encapsulate Paclitaxel and IONPs in PLGA using flash nanoprecipitation. And we can
observe magnetically controlled drug release from these encapsulated nanoparticles
