| A possible approach for clinical cancer treatment is combination chemotherapy. To address this issue, many
anticancer agents have been used simultaneously to achieve synergistic effects with the different mechanism of
actions, however, their toxic side effects are still a big challenge. In this study, a smart, biocompatible, magnetic
nanocarrier composed of multi-branched ionic liquid-chitosan grafted mPEG was designed and used for targeted
multidrug delivery of DOX and MTX as model anticancer agents to MCF7 breast cancer cells. The results of
hemolysis assay on human red blood cells and cytotoxicity studies indicated that blank nanocarrier has no
significant hemolytic and cytotoxic effects in MCF7 cells as observed in the results of MTT assay, however, drugsloaded nanocarrier could decrease the viability of MCF7 cells in a dose-dependent manner. To further simulate
the interaction of nanocarrier with plasma proteins, the SDS-PAGE assay was performed after the nanocarrier
was incubated with human plasma and the results indicated that a series of proteins were attached to the surface
of nanocarrier leading protein-particle corona complex. This complex gives a stealth property as well as increasing cellular uptake process due to the presence of proteins acting as ligands for receptors in the surface of
cancer cells that are suitable for drug delivery systems. The efficiency of dual-drug delivery was also confirmed
by cellular uptake and DAPI staining. All these results persuade us, this nanocarrier is suitable for use in further
animal studies in future investigations. |