Glutathione and acid dual-responsive nanomaterials loaded with methotrexate and magnolol for triple-negative breast cancer treatment

ABSTRACT

In this study, we designed and synthesised MTX and PEG‒grafted chitosan copolymer nanoparticles (PsCM) to load MAG. We generated MAG@PsCM nanoparticles according to the effective ratio of dual drugs of 1:2.5, achieving 3.73% and 8.95% drug loading for MTX and MAG, respectively. Drug efficiency experiments were conducted on MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells, and the results showed that when MTX was used alone, the tumour cell survival rate was 43.66 ± 1.77%and when low-dose MAG and MTX were used in combination, the survival rate of tumour cells was significantly reduced to 29.82% ± 2.22%. The nanoparticles enhanced the synergistic tumour therapeutic effect of the two drugs with the cell survival rate was 21.94 ± 1.43%, significantly lower compared with the free drugs. MAG@PsCM nanoparticles were significantly taken up by cells at 3, 6 and 12 h, and the total amount taken up increased significantly with time.

KEYWORDS:

• Magnolol
• methotrexate
• tumour microenvironment-sensitive
• TNBC
• targeted therapy

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Development Fund of Key Laboratory of Study and Discovery of Small Targeted Molecules of Hunan Province.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10667857.2023.2288780.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Development Fund of Key Laboratory of Study and Discovery of Small Targeted Molecules of Hunan Province (2022CG05); and General projects of Changsha Science and Technology Bureau (kq2202021) to Y.H.; and the National Students Platform for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program (S202110542006) to Z.S.; and Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center of Pharmacy College Students of Hunan Normal University to H.W. and Z.M.