The preparation and characterization of UiO-66 metal–organic frameworks for the delivery of the drug ciprofloxacin and an evaluation of their antibacterial activities

Abstract

In recent years, metal–organic frameworks have been extensively used as drug carriers due to their benefits. In the present study, nanoporous UiO-66 metal–organic framework nanoparticles were prepared using the solvothermal method, and samples of these nanoparticles were loaded with the antibiotic drug ciprofloxacin (CIP). The amount of drug loading on the UiO-66 nanoporous metal–organic frameworks was calculated to be 84%. In addition, the drug delivery behavior for CIP was studied, and showed 80% and 87% release within 3 days in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS, pH 7.4) and acetate buffer (AB, pH 5.0) solutions, respectively. Furthermore, the antibiotic activities of ciprofloxacin trapped in the nanopores of the prepared UiO-66 were evaluated using the disk diffusion method on both Gram-negative (Escherichia coli) and Gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus) bacteria. In addition, all of the products including UiO-66 and CIP-UiO-66 were completely characterized via Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, ultraviolet-visible (UV/vis) spectroscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy, powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area analysis and transmission electron microscopy (TEM).