An experimental and computational study to evaluation of chitosan/gum tragacanth coated-natural lipid-based nanocarriers for sunitinib delivery

Abstract This study aimed to introduce two natural lipids including the fat tail (FT) and the local oil (Roghan Kermanshahi) in order to design lipid nanocarriers for loading of sunitinib malate as a poorly water-soluble anticancer drug. The drug-loaded solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) were fabricated using the modified solvent evaporation-ultrasonic combination method. Coating with chitosan and gum tragacanth (GT) was performed. The physicochemical properties of nanoparticles were analyzed by dynamic light scattering (DLS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Also, in vitro drug release and cytotoxicity effect was investigated. Furthermore, the atomic details of SLNs formation and drug encapsulation were investigated by the computational study. The results showed that polymer-FT-SLNs and polymer-Roghan-SLNs had the particle size in the nanometer range (below 150 nm) with the zeta potential values of higher than |−28 mV| and possessed high entrapment efficiency and loading content of sunitinib. The release of drugs from as prepared delivery systems has demonstrated a sustained release pattern, which was fitted to Higuchi’s kinetics. Prepared free SLNs had shown no cytotoxicity effect while sunitinib loaded SLNs had suitable cytotoxicity against acute myeloid leukemia cells (THP-1). The computational approach has demonstrated that the drug-lipid binding energies are higher in the FT system than RK. Our results indicated that the as-prepared chitosan/tragacanth encapsulated natural lipid SLNs can be a good drug nanocarrier for the hydrophobic anticancer drug.