Paclitaxel loaded human serum albumin nanoparticles stabilized with intermolecular disulfide bonds

Abstract

We prepared paclitaxel-loaded disulfide-crosslinked human serum albumin nanoparticles (PTX-HSA-NPs) in a microfluidic platform. The entire process includes four steps, i.e., a pretreatment step to partially reduce albumin, a mixing and co-precipitation step, a reaction step, and a dialysis step. Two important factors dominate the successful preparation of stable PTX-HSA-NPs: one is the choice of the anti-solvent in the co-precipitation step, and the other is the reaction time in the reaction step. We demonstrated that the drug-loaded nanoparticles are stable against dilution by the inter-albumin disulfide bonds, but still have a quick drug release profile in the intracellular-mimicking reduction environment. Through cell studies, we showed that the albumin nanoparticle carriers are safe and characterized the cell toxicity of the paclitaxel-loaded nanoparticles with cell lines of human breast cancer cells (MCF-7).