Synthesis of Dox Drug Conjugation and Citric Acid Stabilized Superparamagnetic Iron-Oxide Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery

Pramod Kumar, Shrish Agnihotri

Abstract

In this manuscript, we report a novel, low cost and easy synthesis, iron-oxide nanoparticles were synthesized via room-temperature reduction of a mixture of ferric and ferrous salts, containing citric acid as capping agent. Next, anticancer drug doxorubicin (Dox) was used to form electrostatic conjugation with these nanoparticles. The resulting drug-nanoconjugates were characterized for their size, composition, functionality, crystallinity, along with their magnetic and optical behavior. Following that, they were treated with cultured lung carcinoma cell lines (A 549) to probe their non-toxicity and biocompatibility. Concurrently, their uptake in cells in culture was studied by optical bioimaging. In vitro studies have shown that these nanoparticles are nontoxic (using MTT assay) to cells in culture.