Effect of Fabrication Parameters on the Physiochemical Properties of Amphiphilic Chitosan Nanoparticles

The majority of anticancer drugs are hydrophobic and there is a big challenge to deliver them effectively to its target. One efficient way to overcome the challenge is to encapsulate them in an amphiphilic nanocarrier. This study will focus on the encapsulation of palmitic acid (PL) in chitosan nanoparticles by a two-step method, i.e., oil-in-water emulsion/ionic gelation technique to prepare amphiphilic chitosan nanoparticles (ACNs). Due to the importance of physicochemical characteristics of ACNs especially nanoparticle size on cell uptake, the present work has focused on the evaluation of some parameters’ effect such as, sonication power and time, cross-linker and stabilizer concentrations on ACNs size. The success of PL encapsulation was confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and the effect of the parameters were evaluated by laser light scattering and scanning electron microscopy. It was observed that each parameter affected nanoparticle size and morphology with an optimum limit. Thus, this study confirms the importance of preparation parameters on the physicochemical characteristics of ACNs.