| Developing porous nanocarriers through simple methods is one of the main approaches to produce the drug
delivery systems. In this study, a pH-sensitive multifunctional nanocomposite of doxorubicin/Lactose@layered
double hydroxidehydroxyapatite (DOX/Lactose@LDH-HAp) was designed for drug targeted delivery and
controlled release to enhance the cancer treatment effcacy. To the best of our knowledge, there are a very few
literatures in which LDH is used as carrier for loading drug DOX, which is a useful extension for only a limited
number of anti-cancer drugs (usually anionic drugs) loaded in LDH based carriers. The structure and morphology
of the prepared nanocomposite were thoroughly analyzed by various techniques such as X-ray diffraction
analysis (XRD), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), Energy Dispersive X-Ray Analysis (EDX), Fourier-transform
infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Dynamic Light Scattering Particle Size (DLS) and Zeta Potential, and Scanning
Electron Microscopy (SEM). The prepared system achieved an encapsulation effciency (EE) and drug-loading
content (DLC) of 88.4 % and 18.84 %, respectively. The DOX release experiments from nanocomposite
showed a controlled and pH-dependent behavior. In-vitro cytotoxicity and DAPI staining tests of the DOX/
Lactose@LDH-HAp showed high cancer-cell suppression on human liver cancer cell lines (HepG2 cells). Thus,the obtained results in this study suggest that the designed multifunctional nanocomposite could be used as an
effcient system for targeted and controlled delivery of various anti-cancer drugs and other biomedical
applications |