Industrially synthesized biosafe vaterite hollow CaCO3 for controllable delivery of anticancer drugs
Zongqi Feng, Tingyu Yang, Shichao Dong, Ting Wu, Wen Jin, Zhouying Wu, Bingping Wang, Tiantian Liang, Lei Cao, Lan Yu
Abstract
Calcium carbonate (CaCO3) has been widely studied as a drug delivery system (DDS), but it still has some limitations in its clinical application in tumor chemotherapy, such as difficult industrialization, complex synthesis methods, time-consuming and labor-intensive, and low drug loading. Here, we developed an industrialized method for the simple, rapid and controllable synthesis of high drug-loaded vaterite hollow CaCO3 (VHC). The VHC was successfully prepared by adding L-Leucine (Leu) in the process of preparing CaCO3 in an industrial method. The effects of different reaction conditions on VHC were studied in detail, and a possible formation mechanism of VHC was proposed. As an industrially synthesized DDS, the VHC had low cytotoxicity and good biocompatibility, and had higher loading capacity (39.68%) and encapsulation efficiency (90.17%) for doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX) due to the existence of hollow nano-cavity. Meanwhile, [email protected] showed good pH responsiveness, which can achieve sustained release of DOX. And, [email protected] could significantly inhibit tumor cells (cell inhibitory rate: 91.73%) and reduce the toxicity to normal cells. The high drug-loaded VHC synthesized rapidly by industrial methods can achieve controllable drug delivery and high-efficiency inhibition of tumor cells, and has a good application prospect in tumor therapy.