A microwave-triggered controllable drug delivery system based on hollow-mesoporous cobalt ferrite magnetic nanoparticles

Facile synthesis and smart designs of multifuctional nanocarriers would make them more potential in the practical application of drug delivery for cancer treatment. In this study, we synthesized hollowmesoporous cobalt ferrite (H-mCo(x)Fe(3-x)O(4)) nanoparticles by a cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB)-assisted solvothermal method. The resulting monodisperse CoxFe3-xO4 microspheres are 280 nm in diameter with fine uniformity and hollow-mesoporous structure, and they possess a fairly high surface area of 58.03 m(2)/g, a pore volume of 0.13 cm(3)/g, an average pore size of 7.21 nm, and are suitable for drug loading. This material has a high magnetization saturation value (42.2 emu/g) for drug targeting and its sodium chloride suspension could raise to 50 degrees C from room temperature in 180 s. The drug release process shows that the release rate under the microwave irradiation was faster than that under stirring condition, and about 64% VP16 was released after six on/off microwave treatment cycles. So these multifunctional CoxFe3-xO4 nanoparticles with single material are expected to provide the research foundation for using as drug carrier themselves for drug loading, magnetic targeting, and microwave triggered controllable release. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.