Barium Titanate Nanoparticles: Highly Cytocompatible Dispersions in Glycol-chitosan and Doxorubicin Complexes for Cancer Therapy

Abstract

In the latest years, innovative nanomaterials have attracted a dramatic and exponentially increasing interest, in particular for their potential applications in the biomedical field. In this paper, we reported our findings on the cytocompatibility of barium titanate nanoparticles (BTNPs), an extremely interesting ceramic material. A rational and systematic study of BTNP cytocompatibility was performed, using a dispersion method based on a non-covalent binding to glycol-chitosan, which demonstrated the optimal cytocompatibility of this nanomaterial even at high concentration (100 μg/ml). Moreover, we showed that the efficiency of doxorubicin, a widely used chemotherapy drug, is highly enhanced following the complexation with BTNPs. Our results suggest that innovative ceramic nanomaterials such as BTNPs can be realistically exploited as alternative cellular nanovectors.

Keywords: Barium titanate nanoparticles; Cancer therapy; Doxorubicin; Glycol-chitosan; Neuroblastoma.

Figure 1

Schema of the preparation of the BTNPs for biological testing

Figure 2

FIB (a, c) and TEM (b, d) imaging of GC–BTNPs (a, b) and of Dox–BTNPs (c, d)

Figure 3

MTT assay results for increasing GC–BTNPs concentrations and for the respective controls (GC alone)

Figure 4

Summary of the results of the viability/cytotoxicity assay, early apoptosis detection and ROS detection following incubation with increasing GC–BTNPs concentrations

Figure 5

UV/Vis/NIR absorbance analysis of doxorubicin alone and complexed with the nanoparticles (Dox–BTNP)

Figure 6

MTT test (a) and fluorescence quantitative uptake investigation (b) on the Dox–BTNPs complexes and on respective controls (doxorubicin alone). *p < 0.05, **p < 0.005

Figure 7

SH-SY5Y culture incubated for 24 h with 1.5 μg/ml of doxorubicin (a) and culture treated for the same period with the same concentration of doxorubicin but complexed with the BTNPs (Dox–BTNPs 15 μg/ml (b); TEM imaging on Dox–BTNPs-treated cells (c)