Preparation and Characterization of Magnetically Responsive Bacterial Polyester Based Nanospheres for Cancer Therapy

Aksaray University, Department of Secondary Science and Mathematic Education, Aksaray, TurkeyPolyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) are natural, thermoplastic polyesters and due to their biocompatibleand biodegradable properties they are good alternatives for the production of scaffolds for engi-neered tissues or nanoparticles for drug delivery. As a member of polyhydroxyalkanoate family,polyhydroxybutyrates (PHB) have been widely used as a biomaterial for in vitro and in vivo studiessince their mechanical properties are very similar to conventional plastics. By using multi-emulsiontechnique, iron oxide particles were coated with polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) polymer synthesizedfrom Alcaligenes eutrophus bacteria and the magnetic carrier system was prepared accordingly.The bare nanoparticles and magnetic nanoparticles were morphologically, structurally and magnet-ically characterized by using Scanning electron microscope (SEM) and Atomic force microscope(AFM); Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometry (FTIR), and Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) andVibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM) techniques, respectively. Particle size of PHB nanoparti-cles was determined by Zeta Sizer. It was found that the smallest particles were in the range of239,43±5,25 nm in diameter. Concanavalin-A (Con-A) was used for targeting the cancer cells whileetoposide was used as drug. Con-A and etoposide were loaded onto the particles. Release stud-ies of etoposide were evaluated and the system was optimized for the further in vivo applications.Finally different formulation magnetic PHB nanoparticles cytotoxicity were evaluated in cell culturestudies and used HeLa cell line (cervical cancer cells) as a cancer cells and L929 cells (mousefibroblast cells) as a non-cancer cell line.