Fetal bovine serum (FBS) particles, which mainly consist of bovine serum albumin, have the potential for biological and medical applications as drug carriers. The coacervation of albumin is a common technique for preparing albumin-based particles. The replacement of salt with novel metal salts such as Cu is an affordable way to embed the metal ion in the albumin-based particles. Further, increased Cu distribution is prevalent in many cancers. Here, we prepared adhesive cell-like FBS-copper phosphate hybrid particles [FBS-Cu3(PO4)2], which exhibited toxicity toward cancer cells, with a narrow size distribution under cell culture conditions for preventing tumor progression. FBS-Cu3(PO4)2 showed peroxidase-like activity. In addition, FBS-Cu3(PO4)2 was successfully loaded with rhodamine B and conjugated with fluorescein isothiocyanate as models of drugs by coincubation. Thus, we designed a simple preparation method for optimizing FBS-Cu3(PO4)2 synthesis under cell culture conditions. FBS-Cu3(PO4)2 has significant potential as an efficient reactive oxygen species generator and drug-delivery agent against cancer cells. Furthermore, the RhoB-loaded FBS-Cu3(PO4)2 successfully interacted with 4T1 mouse mammary tumor cells and were confirmed to exhibit toxicity.
© 2022 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.