Doxorubicin Release from Bovine Serum Albumin Microparticles

Abstract

Doxorubicin (Dox) is an anthracycline antibiotic and highly potent anticancer drug. However, its utility is often limited by severe side effects such as irreversible cardiotoxicity and reversible nephrotoxicity. In recent years, biopolymeric carriers have been used to overcome the disadvantages of conventional drug delivery systems. In this work, bovine serum albumin (BSA) microparticles were prepared and studied as natural biopolymeric carrier for anticancer agent release. The resulting microparticles were examined for entrapment efficiency and in vitro drug release profile. The entrapment efficiency of prepared BSA microparticles was 75%. Dox loaded BSA microparticles showed good in vitro release profile with the initial burst followed by slower and controlled release of the drug up to 96 h (4 days). The microparticles were evaluated against human liver cancer A549 cells (non-small-cell lung cancer cell line) and HeLa cells (cervical cancer cell line) by MTT reduction assay. The results showed that unloaded microparticles produced very low cytotoxic effects on both cancer cells at all incubation times. Drug loaded microparticles showed lower cell viability of HeLa cells in comparison with A549 cells. It is believed that the obtained results will contribute to the development of new drug delivery systems for cancer treatment.