Preparation and characterization of rod-like chitosan-quinoline nanoparticles as pH-responsive nanocarriers for quercetin delivery

Novel chitosan-quinoline nanoparticles as anticancer drug nanocarriers were prepared using 2-chloro-3-formylquinoline and 3-formylquinolin-2(1H)-one as non-toxic modifying agents via oil-in-water nanoemulsion technique. Chitosan-quinoline nanoparticles were characterized by FT-IR, UV-vis spectrophotometry, XRD, SEM, AFM and DLS techniques. The morphological and particle size studies demonstrated that drug-loaded chitosan-quinoline nanoparticles have a regular nanorod shape and monolithic structure with the desired particle size of 141 to 174.8 nm and a negative zeta potential of -2.4 to -14.1 mV. Drug loading capacity (LC) and encapsulation efficiency (EE) were achieved using quercetin as a hydrophobic anticancer drug and were about 4.8-9.6% and 65.8-77%, respectively. The in vitro release studies displayed great pH-sensitive release behavior. Evaluation of the anticancer efficacy of quercetin loaded chitosan-quinoline nanoparticles using the in vitro cytotoxicity studies against HeLa cells indicated that the chitosan nanoparticles are a promising candidate for the anticancer drugs delivery. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.