PEGylated versus non-PEGylated magnetic nanoparticles as camptothecin delivery system

• Paula M. Castillo,
• Mario de la Mata,
• Maria F. Casula,
• José A. Sánchez-Alcázar and
• Ana P. Zaderenko

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 1312–1319, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.144

• chemotherapeutic agent due to its poor water-solubility and chemical instability and, as a consequence, no effective administration means have been designed. In this work, camptothecin has been successfully loaded into iron oxide superparamagnetic nanoparticles with an average size of 14 nm. It was found that

• ; cancer therapy; iron oxide superparamagnetic nanoparticles; polyethylene glycol; Introduction Camptothecin (CPT) is a quinoline based alkaloid, which exhibits a potent cytotoxic activity against a broad spectrum of tumours [1][2][3]. While most antineoplastic agents inhibit cancer cell proliferation by

• , since an increase of the time during which the cell cultures are incubated with the formulations leads to an increased apoptosis (data not shown). In summary, two new CPT formulations based on iron oxide superparamagnetic nanoparticles have been described and characterized by FTIR. Both formulations