The advent of nanotechnology has bolstered a variety of nanoparticles based platforms for different biomedical applications. A better understanding for engineering novel nanoparticles for applications in cancer staging and therapy requires careful assessment of the nanoparticle's physico-chemical properties. Herein we report a facile synthesis method for PEGylated PLGA nanoparticles encapsulating anti-cancer drug doxorubicin for cancer imaging and therapy. The simple nanoprecipitation method reported here resulted in very robust PEGylated PLGA nanoparticles with close to 95% drug encapsulation efficiency. The nanoparticles showed a size of ~110 nm as characterized by TEM and DLS. The nanoparticles were further characterized by optical UV-Visible and fluorescence spectroscopy. The encapsulated doxorubicin showed a sustained release (>80%) from the nanoparticles matrix over a period of 8 days. The drug delivery efficiency of the nanoparticles was confirmed in vitro confocal imaging with PC3 and HeLa cell lines. In vitro quantitative estimation of drug accumulation in PC3 cell line showed a 22 times higher concentration of drug in case of nanoparticles based formulation in comparison to free drug and this was further reflected in the in vitro cytotoxicity assays. Overall the synthesis method reported here provides a simple and robust PLGA based platform for efficient drug delivery and imaging of cancer cells in vitro and in vivo.
Keywords: Doxorubicin; Drug release; Fluorescence imaging; Nanoprecipitation; PEGylation; PLGA nanoparticles.