Carboxymethyl cellulose based multifunctional targeted drug delivery platform for pancreatic cancer: Nanotheranostic potential and biocompatibility analysis

Abstract

Nanotechnology has exhibited immense potential in the fields of medical and biotechnology with its notable intervention from disease diagnostics to therapy. Cancer nanotechnology is an emerging research arena significantly benefited by the advancements of nanotechnology as it provides potential alternative to conventional chemotherapy with active ligand receptor targeting, specific to cancer cells only that reduces the harmful side effects of traditional chemotherapy. The basic objectives of this study was to provide a new insight for pancreatic cancer specific drug delivery by exploring quercetin loaded hyaluronic acid (HA) coupled carboxymethyl cellulose nanoparticles (CMC) based theranostic system for cancer treatment and imaging. Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is considered to be the most difficult malignancy to handle and it also possesses the worst mortality rate amongst all cancers. In most of the cases it is diagnosed in later stages with limited treatment options. Moreover pancreatic cancer is resistant to conventional chemotherapy that restricts the effectiveness of the treatment. In this regard it is indispensable to develop treatment strategies to optimize drug delivery for pancreatic cancer to improve the prognosis of patients with this malignancy. Based on our experimental findings it can be said that our Quercetin loaded CMC-NPs can be developed as an effective antineoplastic nanovector for the treatment of this fatal disease. Apart from the anticancer efficacy, we exploited the florescence properties of quercetin in bioimaging analysis as well.