Floxuridine-loaded silk fibroin nanospheres

Silk protein is a very promising biomedical material due to its renewability, nontoxicity, biocompatibility, and biodegradability. In this communication, we report our attempt to use regenerated silk fibroin (RSF) as a drug-carrier to encapsulate hydrophilic anti-cancer drug floxuridine (FUDR). The FUDR-loaded RSF nanospheres with the average sizes ranging from 210 to 510 nm are prepared by using a facile and clean method developed in this laboratory previously based on the self-assembly of silk protein. The maximum drug loading is about 6.8% and the release time of such a kind of FUDR-loaded RSF nanospheres is more than 2 days. The FUDR-loaded RSF nanospheres are found to be able to adhere to the Hela cells easily. The FUDR loaded in the RSF nanospheres exhibits the similar curative effect to kill or inhibit Hela cells to the free FUDR. All these results imply that such a kind of biomacromolecule based anti-cancer drug nanocarrier has a great potential for the lymphatic chemotherapy in clinical applications.