A novel biodegradable hollow nanocarrier consisting superparamagnetic Fe3O4-loaded poly-γ-glutamic acid and chitosan oligosaccharide for targeted delivery of sulforaphane from broccoli seed extracts

Abstract

The aim of this study was to synthesize a polymeric nanocarrier system loaded with superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPION) and the sulforaphane(SFN) through a cross-linking method in order to protect the SFN. According to this experiment, the drug-loading content and encapsulation efficiency were 29.97±0.08% and 0.34±0.41%, respectively. The total cumulative amount of SFN, released from the nanocarrier in vitro was 87.90% over a 72 h period. MTT assays indicated that the SPION-SFN-loaded nanocarrier exhibited a much higher in vitro antitumor efficacy than free SFN. Together, these results indicate that SPION-loaded nanocarrier exhibits good drug-loading ability and sustained-release function.