Alkali metal decorated C60 fullerenes as promising materials for delivery of the 5-fluorouracil anticancer drug: a DFT approach

Mehdi D Esrafili; Adnan Ali Khan

doi:10.1039/d1ra09153k

Alkali metal decorated C₆₀ fullerenes as promising materials for delivery of the 5-fluorouracil anticancer drug: a DFT approach

RSC Adv. 2022 Feb 1;12(7):3948-3956. doi: 10.1039/d1ra09153k. eCollection 2022 Jan 28.

Authors

Mehdi D Esrafili¹, Adnan Ali Khan^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Basic Sciences, University of Maragheh P. O. Box 55136-553 Maragheh Iran esrafili@maragheh.ac.ir.
² Centre for Computational Materials Science, University of Malakand Chakdara Pakistan.
³ Department of Chemistry, University of Malakand Chakdara Pakistan.

Abstract

The development of effective drug delivery vehicles is essential for the targeted administration and/or controlled release of drugs. Using first-principles calculations, the potential of alkali metal (AM = Li, Na, and K) decorated C₆₀ fullerenes for delivery of 5-fluorouracil (5FU) is explored. The adsorption energies of the 5FU on a single AM atom decorated C₆₀ are -19.33, -16.58, and -14.07 kcal mol^-1 for AM = Li, Na, and K, respectively. The results, on the other hand, show that up to 12 Li and 6 Na or K atoms can be anchored on the exterior surface of the C₆₀ fullerene simultaneously, each of which can interact with a 5FU molecule. Because of the moderate adsorption energies and charge-transfer values, the 5FU can be simply separated from the fullerene at ambient temperature. Furthermore, the results show that the 5FU may be easily protonated in the target cancerous tissues, which facilitates the release of the drug from the fullerene. The inclusion of solvent effects tends to decrease the 5FU adsorption energies in all 5FU-fullerene complexes. This is the first report on the high capability of AM decorated fullerenes for delivery of multiple 5FU molecules utilizing a C₆₀ host molecule.