A Bioengineered Tf‐Directed Magnetic Mesoporous PCL Nanoplatform for Potent Doxorubicin‐Mediated Glioma Treatment

ABSTRACT This work focuses on the preparation of superparamagnetic iron oxide mesoporous silica nanoparticles (SPIO‐MSNs) via coprecipitation and emulsification technique. The prepared SPIO‐MSNs were encapsulated with doxorubicin (DOX) and coated with polycaprolactone. Further, nanoparticles were conjugated with transferrin (Tf) which particularly binds Tf receptor present in glioma. FT‐IR, XRD, TGA, BET, and other techniques were used to assess the physicochemical characteristics of the nanoparticles. The cytotoxicity results revealed that superparamagnetic iron oxide mesoporous silica and polycaprolactone coated doxorubicin loaded transferrin conjugated (SPIO‐MSN‐PCL‐DOX‐Tf) exhibited low IC 50 value of 120.9 and 105.7 μg/mL for 24 and 48 h compared to free DOX with IC 50 value of 188.3 and 160.5 μg/mL respectively; this evidenced the mutual benefit of Tf and DOX. The synthesized nanoparticles possessed drug loading capacity of 87.5% and encapsulation efficiency of 18.2% while the kinetic study revealed that the nanoparticles obeyed Fickian diffusion. The U‐87 MG and HBME cells observed under microscope showed the morphological changes in the cells. Flow cytometry analysis revealed that the SPIO‐MSN‐PCL‐DOX‐Tf NPs had high geometric fluorescence than SPIO‐MSN‐PCL‐DOX. From the obtained data we can conclude that the prepared nanoparticle with tunable size is promising candidate to treat glioma.