Temperature Variation on Doxorubicin Adsorption by Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles and its Effect towards Release Rate

Mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN) were reported to have many advantages to be used as an ideal drug carrier. In this study, MSN was prepared using the sol gel method with the addition of a pore expander namely triethoxysilyl propylamine (APTES). The prepared MSNs were characterized by using X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to study the crystallinity and topology of the MSN. Adsorption of doxorubicin (DOX) which is a type of anticancer drug onto the MSN was carried out at different temperatures ranging from 50 oC to 80 oC to obtain different drug loading capacities. The mechanism for the adsorption of DOX onto MSN has also been explained in this study. The drug release profile of DOX from MSN-DOX was then evaluated after the adsorption process to know the effect of different drug loading values on the release level and rate. Based on the findings, drug loading values obtained at adsorption temperatures of 50 oC to 80 oC were 77.58%, 80.27%, 88.86% and 84.69%, respectively. The highest adsorption percentage was obtained at 70 oC. As for the drug release study, high drug loading resulted in faster drug release. The drug loading value that released drug at the slowest rate was 77.58% at the rate of 0.038% min-1 with a percentage of release 22.82% after 24 hours.