Targeting of anti-cancer drug using magnetic nanoparticles

Cancer, also called malignancy, is an abnormal growth of cells in the human body which form tissues are called tumors. Specifically, brain tumors are very common and primary brain tumours contain 2% of all adult cancers. Surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy and hormone therapy are used in combination for the treatment of cancer however, the anti-cancer drugs which is used in chemotherapy have many toxic effects causing a lot of side effects such as fatigue, hair loss and anemia etc. As a consequence, it is important to find an effective method for the administration of the anti-cancer drugs like drug delivery systems in order to enhance the efficiency and decrease the dose of the drug. The aim of this project is to target an anti-cancer drug temozolomide to the tumor site using magnetic nanoparticles in the presence of an external magnetic field and develop a new drug delivery system. Temozolomide has very low solubility and stability in aqueous medium at neutral conditions thus, an inclusion complex is needed which can be achieved by using various types of cyclodextrins(CDs) having a hydrophobic cavity that can accommodate the drug and increase the solubility. In addition, chitosan is a biocompatible material so, it is used for many biomedical applications. Chitosan can be used in combination with inorganic materials such as magnetic NPs for drug delivery system. It is aimed to encapsulate TMZ in magnetite-CD-chitosan beads and by applying an external magnetic field the total entity is targeted to the tumor site. In this way, minimum dose of drug is administered to the human body and side effects are expected to decrease. Magnetic nanoparticles are synthesized and stabilized by CDs. Heat profiles and weight loss upon heating of CD&TMZ inclusion complexes are shown to differ significantly from those of physical mixtures. The solubility of TMZ is shown to increase in the presence of CD's using UV and HPLC. In the presence of magnetite particles, chitosan-magnetite beads that contain TMZ are prepared TMZ encapsulation efficiency of different preparation methods are investigated using HPLC and their morphologies are shown using SEM. These beads are then targeted to a specific area where TMZ is shown to accumulate.