Enhanced delivery of doxorubicin for breast cancer treatment using pH-sensitive starch/PVA/g-C3N4 hydrogel

Abstract

This study introduces a starch/PVA/g-C₃N₄ nanocarrier hydrogel for pH-sensitive DOX delivery in breast cancer. DOX was loaded into the nanocarrier with 44.75 % loading efficiency and 88 % Entrapment Efficiency. The release of DOX from the starch/PVA/g-C₃N₄ hydrogel was pH-sensitive: DOX was released faster in the acidic environment pertinent to cancer tumors (with a pH level of 5.4) than in the surrounding regular tissue environment carrying a more neutral environment (pH 7.4). The release kinetics analysis, encompassing zero-order, first-order, Higuchi, and Korsmeyer-Peppas models, revealed significant fitting with the Higuchi model at both pH 5.4 (R² = 0.99, K = 9.89) and pH 7.4 (R² = 0.99, K = 5.70) levels. Finally, we found that hydrogel was less damaging to healthy cells and more specific to apoptotic cells than the drug's free form. The starch/PVA/g-C₃N₄ hydrogel had low toxicity for both normal cells and breast cancer cells, whereas DOX loaded into the starch/PVA/g-C₃N₄ hydrogel had higher toxicity for cancer cells than the DOX-only control samples, and led to specific high apoptosis for cancer cells. The study suggests that DOX can be loaded into a starch/PVA/g-C₃N₄ hydrogel to improve the specificity of the drug's release in cancer tumors or in vitro breast cancer cells.

Keywords: Doxorubicin; Drug delivery; Hydrogel; Starch.