Ellagic acid—Fe@BSA nanoparticles for preferential payload delivery and chemodynamic therapy in A549 cells

Abstract

Recent advances in nanomedicine hail chemodynamic therapy (CDT), based on the Fe (II)-mediated Fenton reaction, as a forthcoming, potentially revolutionary, and tumor mediation strategy. Various experiments have proven the therapeutic effects of CDT in vivo as well as in diverse tumor cell lines, but most processes lack significant targeting among other hurdles, viz., the optimization of physical parameters (i.e., aggregation, organic carriers, conjugates etc.). Briefly, Fe (III) in the form of FeCl3 was conjugated with bovine serum albumin nanoparticles (NP) in order to derive a novel in vitro nano-therapeutic system against A549 cells by a chemical synthesis approach. A naturally occurring anti-tumor agent ellagic acid was conjugated to the NPs to improve their therapeutic effect and test for the anticipated increase in bioavailability and cytotoxicity of the drug. The NP system was sufficiently characterized using dynamic light scattering, UV-vis spectroscopy, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analysis and cell viability was examined using an (3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide) assay. The results demonstrate the NP system to be within range of proper nano-delivery mechanism and cytotoxicity examinations reveal the novel drug and CDT combination to be greatly effective in reducing tumor cell proliferation, holding great promise in being extrapolated to in vivo model systems for further analysis.