Biological activity of curcumin-loaded cyclodextrin-decorated superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles

Abstract

Curcumin, a curcuminoid from Curcuma longa, possesses enormous potential as a therapeutic agent in numerous applications, including antibacterial and anticancer therapy. However, its low water solubility and poor bioavailability severely hamper its use as a therapeutic agent. To overcome such limitations, drug delivery systems (DDS) are being investigated in order to improve their pharmacokinetic profile. In this context, nanoparticles have been actively studied as promising DDS as they possess a number of desirable characteristics to improve drug delivery, including a large surface area-to-volume ratio, that enables better drug uptake and controlled drug releasekinetics.Cyclodextrins are a family of naturally occurring cyclic oligosaccharides derived fromthe enzymatic conversion of starch. They have been employed in the pharmaceutical industryin recent years. Cyclodextrins are water-soluble and possess an interior hydrophobic cavity thatcan form inclusion complexes with a variety of different guest molecules, including curcumin.However, the administration of cyclodextrin in its monomeric form suffers from severaldrawbacks due to its faster clearance. Nanoparticle packaging of cyclodextrin might helpovercome some of its limitations and improve bioavailability. Such nanoparticles could also beused for multi-functional therapeutics by delivering different types of hydrophobic cargo andremoving unwanted hydrophobic constituents, such as cholesterol, a useful therapy inneurodegenerative disease treatment.In this work, we introduce different delivery options for curcumin using bcyclodextrins and cyclodextrin-appended superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles. We alsoaim to identify the ability of b-cyclodextrin to sequester cholesterol and reduce bacterialgrowth. We report the cholesterol-mopping activity of cyclodextrin-decoratedsuperparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles in cholesterol-impaired CHO cell lines. Moreover,apoptotic properties on HepG2 cells are assessed for free curcumin and curcumin-loaded oneither cyclodextrin or cyclodextrin-functionalized superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles.Finally, we investigate free curcumin, free cyclodextrin, and curcumin-loaded cyclodextrinsfor their antibacterial effect on Staphylococcus aureus.