Chitosan/ titanium dioxide@ multiwalled carbon nanotube nanocomposite hydrogel as an efficient pH-responsive drug delivery system for curcumin delivery

Nowadays enormous sums of money are spent on the fabrication of appropriate and new drug delivery systems (DDSs) that release drugs in a controlled way. Hydrogels are three-dimensional, framework-compatible materials that can retain significant quantities of water, rendering them suitable for applications in the biomedical area. Natural hydrogels prepared from polysaccharides are promising strategies for producing stimuli-responsive drug carriers. Herein, a novel nanocarrier comprising chitosan (CS)-based nanocomposite with various loadings of Titania@multiwalled carbon nanotube (TiO 2 @MWCNT) as a hybrid nanoparticle was prepared (CS/TiO 2 @MWCNT) for controlled release of curcumin (CUR). The properties of the prepared CS/TiO 2 @MWCNT (CTM) were determined using XRD, FT-IR, SEM, and EDX analyses. Drug release experiments were accomplished at pH 2, 4.6, and 7.2. The fundings showed that at pH 2, CUR is released more rapidly from the hydrogels. In addition, increasing the content of MWCNT from 5% to 15% in the composite resulted in a decline in the release rate of CUR from the hydrogel. Furthermore, a BBD method was chosen to optimize the experiments. According to ANOVA, the p < 0.05 reflected the significance of the parameters. The drug release mechanism was studied using diverse kinetic models. The results showed that Korsmeyer-Peppas is the most appropriate model to describe the CUR release from CTM. Furthermore, the result of the MTT assay confirmed the sustained drug release pattern of CTM@CUR against MCF-7 breast cancer cell lines. The results also revealed that the CTM hydrogel with maximum CUR loading efficiency (91.7%) has a better performance than other prepared carriers.