Based on sodium alginate coatings and dendritic copolymeric modification of curcumin delivery system: pH-sensitive nanospheres and strong tumor cytotoxicity.

This study aims to construct a novel drug delivery strategy to address the poor bioavailability and biostability of curcumin. A curcumin delivery strategy, basing on post-polymerization modification of poly(2-vinyl-4,4-dimethyl azlactone) to obtain conjugates of curcumin and dendritic polymers, combined with sodium alginate coating is reported. The curcumin-polymer conjugates were shown to have good fluorescence properties with fluorescence quantum yields of 0.486 and 0.470, respectively. The composites were characterized as spherical nanoparticles with a desirable particle size of 221.7 nm and massive negatively charged surfaces. These aesthetic properties make it an acceptable drug delivery and release vehicle. In vitro release experiments showed that release of curcumin from the conjugates was controllable and acid-sensitive, which is expected to guide delivery targeting to cancer sites. In addition, biodistribution studies of the gastrointestinal tract of mice showed high levels of exposure. The results of cell imaging showed that conjugates have strong permeability to cancer cell membranes. They have been shown to have strong targeting and inhibitory effects on a variety of cancer cells, with an inhibition rate of up to about 90 %. Therefore, such novel vector designs show great potential in drug delivery mechanism research and cancer therapy.