Fabrication of a pH-Responsive 5-FU@MSN-SA Nanoplatform for Anti-Tumor Activity

Design of high-performance drug delivery system is necessary to improve the anticancer ability of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU). In this work, we developed a pH-responsive 5-FU loaded and sodium alginate (SA) modified mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) drug delivery system (5-FU@MSN-SA). After 5-FU was loaded into the pores, MSNs were successfully functionalized with amino groups and then capped by sodium alginate. Compared to acidic conditions, the drug release rate in the neutral environment was quite low. Moreover, detailed investigations confirmed that 5-FU@MSN-SA can easily be up-taken by cancer cells and proved the high cytotoxicity to 4T1 cells. The calculated IC 5 0 values for 5-FU and 5-FU@MSN-SA were 34.67 μ g/mL and 54.95 μ g/mL, respectively. These results indicated that 5-FU@MSNs-SA can be a promising nanoplatform in cancer therapy.