The preparation and characterization of UiO-66 metal-organic frameworks for the delivery of the drug ciprofloxacin and an evaluation of their antibacterial activities

In recent years, metal-organic frameworks have been extensively used as drug carriers due to their benefits. In the present study, nanoporous UiO-66 metal-organic framework nanoparticles were prepared using the solvothermal method, and samples of these nanoparticles were loaded with the antibiotic drug ciprofloxacin (CIP). The amount of drug loading on the UiO-66 nanoporous metal-organic frameworks was calculated to be 84%. In addition, the drug delivery behavior for CIP was studied, and showed 80% and 87% release within 3 days in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS, pH 7.4) and acetate buffer (AB, pH 5.0) solutions, respectively. Furthermore, the antibiotic activities of ciprofloxacin trapped in the nanopores of the prepared UiO-66 were evaluated using the disk diffusion method on both Gram-negative (Escherichia coli) and Gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus) bacteria. In addition, all of the products including UiO-66 and CIP-UiO-66 were completely characterized via Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, ultraviolet-visible (UV/vis) spectroscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy, powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area analysis and transmission electron microscopy (TEM).