DEVELOPMENT OF BIOCOMPATIBLE HUMAN SERUM ALBUMIN NANOPARTICLES FOR ENHANCED DELIVERY OF ANTI-CANCER AGENT

Abstract

With the ever increasing global burden of cancer, one of the major challenges for cancer therapy is to develop drugs that are effective and safe to use. Epirubicin is an anthracycline antitumor antibiotic which is very frequently used in chemotherapy in combination with other drugs for various malignancies like breast cancer, lung cancer, and leukemia. But the drug efficacy is reduced due to certain limitations. However, the bioavailability and effectiveness of this drug can be improved by encompassing it with nanoparticles mediated drug delivery. In this work, in order to enhance the chemotherapeutic scope of epirubicin, we encapsulated it into human serum albumin nanoparticles using desolvation method. Human serum albumin (HSA) nanoparticles are one of the highly potent protein based nano platform for designing drug delivery systems. These drug loaded NPs were then characterized for physio-chemical properties and entrapment efficiency measured. Further they are to be assessed by cell viability, toxicity and morphological assays. These results would accelerate its therapeutic applications and open up new horizon towards improving anti-cancer therapy.