Human serum albumin nanoparticles for enhanced drug delivery to treat breast cancer: Preparation and In Vitro assessment

Abstract

Most anticancer drugs are greatly limited by the serious side effects that they cause. Tamoxifen is toxic to cancer cells and used against breast cancer. However, it may lead to irreversible cardio toxicity, which could even result in congestive heart failure. It decreases white blood cells count with increased risk of infections, hair loss, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, mouth or lip sores, diarrhoea, no menstruation. In order to avoid these harmful side effects to the patients and to improve the therapeutic efficacy of tamoxifen, we developed tamoxifen loaded -chitosan enhanced human serum albumin (HSA) nanoparticles. HSA is the most abundant plasma protein (35-50 g/l human serum) with an average half life of 19 days. HSA is a very soluble globular monomeric proteins consisting of 585 amino acid residues and 35 cysteinyl residues. When HSA is broken down the amino acid will provide nutrition to peripheral tissues. These properties as well as its preferential uptake in tumor and flamed tissues, biodegradability and lack of toxicity make it an ideal candidate for drug delivery. The formed nanoparticles were 137 nm in size with a surface zeta potential of _˜+15 mV, prepared using 30 μg of chitosan added per mg of HSA. Cytotoxicity was not observed with empty chitosan enhanced HSA nanoparticles, formed with low-molecular weight (250) kDa chitosan, indicating biocompatibility and safety of the nanoparticle formulation. Under optimized transfection conditions, approximately 80% of cells were transfected with HSA nanoparticles containing tetramethyl rhodamine-conjugated bovine serum albumin. Conclusively, chitosan enhanced HSA nanoparticles show potential for developing into an effective carrier for anticancer drugs.