Folate attached, curcumin loaded Fe3O4 nanoparticles: A novel multifunctional drug delivery system for cancer treatment

Study and development of drug delivery nanosystem for cancer treatment are attracting great attention in recent years. In this work, we studied the role of folic acid as a targeting factor on magnetic nano particle Fe3O4 based curcumin loading nanosystem. Characteristics of the nanosystems were investigated by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), while targeting role of folic was accessed in vivo on tumor bearing mice. The results showed that folate attached Fe3O4 based curcumin loading nanosystem has very small size and exhibits better targeting effect compared to the counterpart without folate. In addition, magnetic induction heating of this nanosystem evidenced its potential for cancer hyperthermia. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.