Drug delivery of hydroxyurea to breast cancer using liposomes

It is clear that cancer is one of the most mortal diseases in the world and the most prevalent among women is breast cancer. As hydroxyurea (HU) - a drug which is used in chemotherapy - has many adverse effects in long-term despite of its therapeutic properties, we made use of nano drug delivery technology in order to reduce adverse effects and increase therapeutic index. Thus, liposomation is a novel way in drug delivery systems. In this study a mixture of phosphatidylcholine and cholesterol was mixed and HU was added to the resultant mixture. The mean diameter of the nanoliposomal HU measured with the Zeta Sizer device (equal to 402.5 nm) and its encapsulation efficiency was 70.8 %. Besides, using dialysis, the pattern of drug release from nanoliposomes has been studied and the results showed that the drug release of nanoliposomal drug within 28 h was equal to 25.85 %. This study showed that the cytotoxicity effect of nanoliposomal drug is more than that of the standard drug. © 2012 Association of Clinical Biochemists of India.