Folate-PG modified halloysite nanotube for enhancing tumor targeting and anticancer efficacy

Halloysite nanotubes have been gradually applied in the field of biomedicine, due to their attractive properties including biocompatibility, nontoxicity, hydrophilic and low-cost. Here, polyglycerol (PG) is used to wrap the surface of Hal to yield Hal-PG, so that there are a large number of hydroxyl groups on the surface of Hal-PG. Then, Hal-PG-FA nanocomplexes were prepared by combining folate (FA) with Hal-PG via esterification reaction. Thereafter, doxorubicin (DOX) was loaded on novel targeted anticancer delivery system Hal-PG-FA that can bind specifically to tumor cells that overexpressed the folate receptor. The obtained nanomaterials were fully characterized using FT-IR, TEM, XPS, TGA and DLS techniques. Moreover, the anticancer activity of Hal-PG-FA/DOX was detected by Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK8) and flow cytometry (FCM). In vitro cytotoxicity assay preliminarily proved that the Hal-PG-FA/DOX had a more significant inhibitory effect than the free DOX. The results of flow cytometry showed that apoptosis rate on HeLa cells was enhanced by Hal-PG-FA/DOX. All these results showed that folate-PG modified halloysite is an excellent nano anticancer drug carrier in cancer therapy.