Effect of the nanopartilcle shape on the cancer treatment: the case of pluronic F127 stabilized and doxorubicin loaded magnetite nanocubes and nanospheres

Magnetic nanoparticles are extensively prepared for the potential use in nanomedicine fields: MRI and drug delivery. Magneto-niosomes – magnetic nanoparticles, stabilized by non-ionic surfactants are the ones of the... [ view full abstract ]

Magnetic nanoparticles are extensively prepared for the potential use in nanomedicine fields: MRI and drug delivery. Magneto-niosomes – magnetic nanoparticles, stabilized by non-ionic surfactants are the ones of the promising agents in such fields. They are examples of theranostic agents combining therapy (drug delivery) and diagnostics (MRI contrast agents) in one agent. The other rarely studied aspect is the effect of nanoparticle shape on toxicity, drug delivery and relaxivity. The following work is dedicated to synthesizing of magneto-niosomes with different core shapes (spherical and cubic), and investigating the effect of nanoparticles shape on relaxivity and toxicity towards PC3 and LNCaP cancer cell cultures.
Nanospheres and nanocubes were synthesized by thermal decomposition of iron oleate in 1-octadecene. Shape control was reached by different stabilizers molar ratio in reaction medium. According to TEM measurements average size of the nanoparticles is 20±5 nm. The synthesized nanoparticles were transferred into water by non-ionic surfactant (Pluronic F127) solution. DLS data demonstrates that nanoparticles average size has risen up to 90±10 nm due to niosomes formation. The hydrophilized nanoparticles were loaded with doxorubicin by addition of its solution into hydrosol and stirring. Doxorubicin excess was taken away by centrifugation and supernatant removing. Spectrophotometry was used to determine the doxorubicin loading (the average drug loading is 13,5% of drug carrier). Loaded niosomes cytotoxicity was measured on PC3 and LNCaP cultures by MTT assay and compared to cytotoxicity of unloaded nanoparticles and free doxorubicin after 48 hour of incubation.
The obtained data demonstrate lower cytotoxicity of doxorubicin loaded nanoparticles compared to free doxorubicin at the same doxorubicin concentrations in cell culture. This happens due to slow doxorubicin releasing from Pluronic shell of magneto-niosomes which play a role of drug carrier. Also nanocubes based niosomes has shown a bit higher cytotoxicity compared to analogous nanospheres based agents. This effect is caused by four times higher uptake of nanocubes versus nanospheres. Both cubic and spherical niosomes demonstrated relatively high T2-relaxivity (240 mM-1*c-1 and 262 mM-1*c-1 respectively).
The authors knowledge financial support from Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation (14.607.21.0132, RFMEFI60715X0132).