Self-assembled histidine acid phosphate nanocapsules as templates for multifunctional hollow platinum nanospheres in ionic liquid [BMIM][BF4] for drug delivery

During the past few decades, the design and fabrication of nano drug delivery vehicle has received considerable attention for incorporating multi-functionality, emphasizing transportation of anticancer drugs to tumour sites. Protein-based nanoparticles hold significant promise in the development of anticancer drug delivery systems since they have remarkable superiority in biocompatibility, biodegradability and natural metabolism in physiologic systems. Ionic liquids (ILs) are a class of solvents that are composed solely of ions (ILs ¿ commonly referred as room temperature molten salts or room temperature ionic liquids). They have recently emerged as green solvents or green reaction media, because of their reported unique physico-chemical properties. We report for the first time the controlled self-assembly of Histidine Acid phosphatase (HAP) enzyme in the IL 1- butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate [BMIM][BF4], leading to the formation of HAP nanocapsules as template for synthesis of platinum nanospheres. These HAP nanocontainers were loaded with an anticancer drug curcumin. We further demonstrated in vitro drug release and synergistic anticancer effect of these systems on three different cell lines viz. hepatocellular carcinoma (HepG2), breast cancer (MCF-7) and human acute monocytes (THP-1). The present work can extend our theoretical understanding on nanobio interfacial molecular self assembly and will facilitate the motivated insights of inorganic/organic hybrid nano-materials/ nano-particles/ nano-objects and ionic liquids based multi functional drug delivery vehicles with synergistic combination chemotherapy for potential application in tumor targeting.