doxorubicin loaded dna aptamer linked myristilated chitosan nanogel for targeted drug delivery to prostate cancer

recently, specific attention has been paid to aptamers, short dna or rna, as a tool for cancer diagnosis and therapy. in the present study mcs nanogels were prepared by myristate: chitosan at 1:9 ratio and were characterized by several techniques. a selected ssdna aptamer(apt) capable of detecting lncap cells was linked to myristilated chitosan nanogels (apt-mcs) by glutaraldehyde and loaded with doxorubicin (dox) to be used in targeted drug delivery against the prostate cancer cells. lncap and pc-3 cells were treated with apt-mcs-dox complex and the binding efficiency was estimated by flow cytometry. the binding affinity of the selected aptamers was above 70% compared to the initial library. the loading capacity of the nanogel was as high as 97% and up to 40% of dox were released from mcs within 15 days.cytotoxicity of nanodrugs on lncap cells were determined by mtt assay. apt-mcs-dox was specifically binded to lncap cells whereas it didn’t show any specificity to pc-3 cells as a negative control. both mcs-dox and apt-mcs-dox showed a lethal effect on lncap cells. our results can lead to an aptamer based simple and applicable technique for early diagnosis and treatment of cancerous cells.keywords: dox; mcs; nanogel; aptamer; targeted drug delivery; prostate cancer.