Freeze-thaw electrospun PVA-dacarbazine nanoparticles: preparation, characterization and anticancer evaluation

Abstract

Dacarbazine (DTIC) is an antitumor agent that has limited clinical applications due to its insolubility, instability and toxicity to normal cells. One possibility to achieve controlled release is PVA-based NPs. This work presents electrospun NPs that combines PVA and DTIC. The results showed that DTIC NPs had mean particle sizes of 458.2 ± 113.6 nm, suggested the presence of DTIC in an amorphous state and showed a burst in vitro drug release followed by constant release. The cytotoxicity evaluation showed that DTIC NPs were effective against glioblastoma cells. This study indicates that the formulated NPs improved DTIC solubility and efficacy.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Anticancer activity
• Dacarbazine
• electrospinning
• freeze-thaw
• nanoparticles
• polyvinyl alcohol

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Wynette Redington (Bernal Institute, University of Limerick) for assistance with XRD analysis.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there are no conflict of interest.

Statement of authors' contributions to manuscript

L.S, B.S.C and Z.C. conducted the experiments; L.S., D.J.M. and M.N. wrote the paper. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported in parts by grants from the Athlone Institute of Technology research and development funding, GOI-IES (Government of Ireland International Education Scholarship) and CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, Brazil).