Can Be a Bimetal Oxide ZnO—MgO Nanoparticles Anticancer Drug Carrier and Deliver? Doxorubicin Adsorption/Release Study

Bimetal oxide ZnO MgO nanoparticles were synthesised by precipitation method at low temperature and characterised by analytical techniques such as XRD, SEM and FT-IR. In order to know the efficiency of uptake and release of anticancer drug, the adsorption and release of doxorubicin, on bimetal oxide nanoparticles was performed in dark room at room temperature. The adsorption models such as Henry, Freundlich and Langmuir models were validated with obtained experimental data. Due to heterogeneous surface of bimetal oxides, data followed well with Henry and Freundlich models but not Langmuir that proposed homogeneous adsorbent surface. The strong affinity between drug and nanoparticles is certainly due to the electrostatic interaction between positively charged doxorubicin molecules and negatively charged surface of ZnO MgO nanoparticles and hydrogen bonding between them that confirmed from FT-IR analysis. The doxorubicin release from ZnO MgO nanoparticles was performed at pH 4 and 7 to evaluate the kinetic of drug release using various mathematical models. At neutral pH, the doxo release was found to be ∼14% whereas at acidic pH (pH 4) nearly 68% of doxo was released at 6.5 hours due to dissolution and neutralising the surface charge of ZnO MgO nanoparticles. Various mathematical models such as zero order, first order, Higuchi and Hixson-Crowell were approached to evaluate the kinetic release of drug from the nanoparticles. The obtained release data for acidic pH followed Hixson-Crowell model, proposes erosion dependent release system, compared to Higuchi that confirmed doxo release is due to dissolution of ZnO MgO nanoparticles. In this study, it is concluded that ZnO MgO nanoparticles will be a promising drug vehicle in drug delivery system.