Enhanced Intracellular Delivery of Curcumin by Chitosan-Lipoic Acid as Reduction-Responsive Nanoparticles

Aims: Enhancement of anti-tumor activity of the chemotherapeutic agent CUR by redoxsensitive nanoparticle to get a deeper insight into cancer therapy. Background: Tumor targetability and stimulus are widely used to study the delivery of drugs for cancer diagnosis and treatment because poor cellular uptake and inadequate intracellular drug release lead to inefficient delivery of anticancer agents to tumor tissue. Objective: Studies distinguishing between tumor and normal tissues or redox-sensitive systems using glutathione (GSH) as a significant signal. Methods: In this study, we designed Chitosan-Lipoic acid Nanoparticles (CS-LANPs) to improve drug delivery for breast cancer treatment by efficient delivery of Curcumin (CUR). The properties of blank CS-LANPs were studied in detail. The size and the Polydispersity Index (PDI) of the CS-LANPs were optimized. Results: The results indicate the mean size and PDI of the blank CS-LANPs were around 249 nm and 0.125, respectively. However, the Drug Loading (DL) and Encapsulation Efficiency (EE) of the CSLANPs were estimated to be about 18.22% and 99.80%, respectively. Compared to non-reductive conditions, the size of reduction-sensitive CS-LANPs increased significantly under reductive conditions. Therefore, the drug release of CS-LANPs in the presence of glutathione was much faster than that of non-GSH conditions .Moreover, the antitumor effect of CS-LANPs on MCF-7 cells was determined in vitro by MTT assay, cell cytotoxicity, Caspase-3 Assay, detection of mitochondrial membrane potential and quantification of apoptosis incidence. Conclusion: CS-LANPs showed a remarkably increased accumulation in tumor cells and had a better tumor inhibitory activity in vitro. CS-LANPs could successfully deliver drugs to cancer cells and revealed better efficiency than free CUR.