Co-delivery of 5-fluorouracil and oxali-palladium via β-lactoglobulin nano-capsules coated with Low Methoxyl Pectin for colon cancer therapy

Chemotherapy is associated with serious side effects in terms of its high toxicity. Optimizing nanoscale drug delivery systems offers a way to overcome these side effects in cancer treatment. This research studies the synthesis and optimization of beta-lactoglobulin (beta-LG) nanocapsules coated with Low Methoxyl Pectin (LMP) for the simultaneous delivery of two major drugs, 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and Oxali-palladium, used for colon cancer chemotherapy. The current research investigates the co-delivery system's physical characteristics, drug loading, and in vitro drug release, as well as its toxicity against the colon cancer cell line. Our findings show that the present co-delivery system uniformly forms, especially at pH 4.5, and has a size <120 nm, this being well optimized for colon cancer cell pores. Moreover, this co-delivery system demonstrates drug encapsulation efficiency of more than 60% for both drugs. Furthermore, it has shown stability and resistance to low-pH acidic conditions. In contrast, it shows the sensitivity to alkaline conditions, which determines that the co-delivery system is optimized for the colon cancer environment. The in vitro drug release results confirm these findings as the highest release rate is associated with the simulated colon cancer conditions. Hence, the present codelivery system shows higher cytotoxicity toward colon cancer cell lines when compared to free drugs. An indepth optimization of the co-delivery system of 5-FU and Oxali-palladium using beta-LG and LMP is provided, which promotes the development of a protein-based co-delivery system at the nanoscale. Finally, it can be concluded that the presented co-delivery system is very promising to be used in oral drug delivery for colon cancer treatment.