Development of drug delivery systems for taxanes using ionic gelation of carboxyacyl derivatives of chitosan

Abstract Nanoparticles of two chitosan derivatives – N -succinyl-chitosan (SC) and N -glutaryl-chitosan (GC) – were developed as passive transport systems for taxanes (paclitaxel and docetaxel) using an ionic gelation technique with sodium tripolyphosphate. These nanoparticles had an apparent hydrodynamic diameter of 300–350 nm, a ζ-potential of 25–31 mV, an encapsulation efficiency of 21–26%, and a drug loading efficiency of 6–13%. DLS and SLS analysis shows that the nanoparticles have a unimodal size distribution and spherical form. Drug release kinetics of the taxane-loaded nanoparticles demonstrates that more than 50% of the loaded taxane could be released upon the degradation of the nanoparticles after targeted delivery. The drug-loaded SC and GC nanoparticles exhibit high cytotoxicity towards AGS cancer cell lines and their antitumor activity is consequently enhanced when compared with free taxanes.