MICROENCAPSULATION OF AMYGDALIN IN CHITOSAN AND ITS POTENTIAL APPLICATION IN CANCER DRUG DELIVERY

Abstract

Breast cancer in women, along with lung and colon cancer, is the most common malignancy and one of the three most common cancers in the world. Breast cancer mortality in less developed countries is on the rise, partially due to lack of access to state-of - the-art treatment and therapy. According to the American Cancer Society, 62,930 cases of breast cancer were detected in women and this data has reached approximately 268,600 new cases by 2019. An approximate 42,260 deaths from breast cancer occurred in 2019 (41,760 women, 500 men). In 1989, the mortality rate for breast cancer in females rose up to 33.2 (per 100,000), then showed a 20% decrease in 2016. Till date, several chemotherapeutic agents have been used for the treatment of breast cancer, but they are still far away from perfect because of their short-half life, low accumulation in tumors, poor bioavailability, non specific selectivity, severe multi-drug resistance (MDR) and adverse side effects. To address these limitations, a variety of drug delivery systems including chemo therapy, radiation therapy, and targeted therapy have been used. Drugs extracted from natural origin has also been tested and accepted. One of the natural origin drugs is amygdalin. It is extracted from Prunus armeniaca, commonly known as apricot and is a member of rosaceae family. It is a natural anticancer agent (Bolarinwa, Orfila, & Morgan, 2014). The plantations of apricot are distributed all over the world in countries like America, China, North Africa, Mediterranean regions, India etc. Australia and New Zealand produce relatively fewer quantities. Among the diverse approaches to treat cancer, microencapsulation is a very popular and widely acceptable approach to improve the aqueous solubility, controlled release and therapeutic efficacy of drug. Over the last few years, a variety of degradable polymers (natural as well as synthetic) have been used in the development of drug delivery system. Chitosan has been highly used to microencapsulate drugs and deliver them to cancer site. Chitosan is a copolymer with β-(1,6,4) bonding of D-glucosamine and N-acetyl-D-glucosamine, is obtained by alkaline and enzymatic deacetylation of chitin and is an abundant polymer in nature. As they are biorenewable, biodegradable and biofunctional, they possess high biological and mechanical properties due to their special architectures. Chitosan is derived from crustacean shells such as crabs, prawns, lobsters and shrimps, insect exoskeletons, and fungal cell walls such as aspergillus and mucor. Crab and shrimp shell waste are currently used as the major industrial source of biomass for the manufacture of chitin and chitosan on a large scale.