Folic acid encapsulated silver nitroprusside nanoparticles for targeted therapy in ovarian cancer.

Ovarian cancer is the most prevalent fatal, gynecological malignancy in women, resulting poor survival rate (5th in cancer deaths) owing to its asymptomatic nature. The unmet medical challenges for ovarian cancer are associated with several limitations such as poor bioavailability, non-specificity and toxicity related issues. Targeted drug delivery systems may over come the existing limitations. Utilizing the concept of overexpression of folate receptors in the ovarian carcinoma, in the present study, we have designed folate receptor targeted drug delivery system(AgNNPs-FA) by the combination of silver nitroprusside nanoparticles (AgNNPs) because of its inherant anti-cancer property as established by our group and folic acid (FA) as targeting agent that target folate receptors. Initially, both and AgNNPs and AgNNPs-FA were designed and later characterized using several analytical tools such as DLS, XRD, SEM, TEM,TGA,HPLC and FTIR etc. The in vitro cell viability assay in CHO cell line suggests the biocompatible nature of AgNNPs-FA. The targeted anticancer activity of the AgNNPs-FA is established in human ovarian adenocarcinoma (SK-OV-3) through several in vitro assays and compared with AgNNPs. All in vitro assays (cell viability assay, thymidine incorporation assay, scratch assay, cell cycle, apoptosis assay, tunnel assay) in SK-OV-3 and in vivo experiment (CAM assay) in fertilized eggs with AgNNPs-FA shows more anti-cancer activity in targeted fashion than that of AgNNPs. The plausible mechanisms behind the anti-cancer activity of the nanoparticles were demonstrated through ROS assay (DCFDA and DHE staining), JC-1 staining, immunocytochemistry staining (Ki-67) and Western blot analysis. The results altogether support that these targeted drug delivery system could be used as an alternative treatment strategy for ovarian cancer and other cancer having overexpression of folate receptors.