Intercalation of Anticancer Drugs in Zirconium Phosphate Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery

During the past decades scientists have been expanding their efforts to develop anticancer drugs to fight against a disease that takes the lives of millions of people worldwide every year. Doxorubicin was developed in the 50’s and acts by insertion in DNA inhibiting the Topoisomerase II and therefore cell replication. On the other hand, cisplatin coordinates to two guanines in the DNA, distorting the double helix and activating the apoptosis protein system. These drugs are very effective but also have acute side effects due to the lack of selectivity toward cancer cells. The objective of this research is to unify the anticancer potential of doxorubicin and cisplatin in a combined therapy using zirconium phosphate (ZrP) nanoparticles as drug delivery agents.  ZrP works as the selectivity-inducing agent taking advantage of its chemical and thermal stability, and the enhanced permeability and retention effect of nanoparticles in tumor cells. X-Ray powder diffraction (XRPD), infrared spectroscopy (IR), scanning electron microscopy- energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), UV-Vis spectrophotometry, diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and Raman spectroscopy has been performed to characterize the intercalated product. The XRPD pattern shows that the cointercalation of doxorubicin and cisplatin in ZrP produces a second order diffraction peak of 10.5 Å corresponding to an interlaminar distance of ~21 Å, which is consistent with previous results from our laboratory on doxorubicin intercalation. The presence of cisplatin was corroborated by the Pt peaks at energies of 9.48 and 2.048 KeV in SEM-EDX spectra and by IR spectroscopy.