Apomaghemite as a doxorubicin carrier for anticancer drug delivery.

Protein cages have well-defined structures and can be chemically and biologically engineered in many ways, making them useful platforms for drug delivery applications. Taking advantage of the unique structure feature of apoferritin, a new theranostic nanocarrier is proposed herein. The apoferritin protein is effective for the encapsulation of maghemite nanoparticles and for loading a significant dose of doxorubicin (DOX) drug. This simultaneous loading of maghemite nanoparticles and DOX has been achieved using either co-encapsulation or surface-binding approaches. Maghemite nanoparticles coated with the protein apoferritin are an effective long-term MRI liver contrast agent and we report here that additionally they can serve as an anticancer drug-delivery system. In particular we show that maghemite-containing apoferritin can sustain the DOX delivery under period of 10 to 25 days depending on the environmental conditions.