Curcumin‐Loaded Starch Micro/Nano Particles for Biomedical Application: The Effects of Preparation Parameters on Release Profile

Although curcumin is highly cytotoxic against cancer cells, its hydrophobicity and fast degradation at physiological pH limit its effective practical application. To prevent such limitations, inexpensive curcumin‐loaded starch particles are synthesized in this research. Particles are prepared by water‐in‐oil (W/O) miniemulsion technique and an adsorption method is used for curcumin loading. Also, encapsulation efficiency (%EE) is improved by using pluronic F‐127 in the drug solution. Particles are characterized, swelling studies are performed, and MTT assays against human adipose mesenchymal stem cells (hAMSCs) and MG‐63 cells are utilized for investigations. Results indicate that crosslinker, surfactant, and stirring rate affect the swelling degree of bare particles as well as %EE and release profile of drug‐loaded particles. Moreover, swelling degree, %EE, and burst release are modeled by design of experiments via response surface method. Due to analysis of variance, the responses can be predicted by quadratic models within the design space. Also, cell viability studies depict that curcumin encapsulation improves its cytotoxic effect on MG‐63 cells due to its sustained release while it has no cytotoxic effect on hAMSCs. In addition, it can be concluded that curcumin sustained release plays a more crucial role on cell viability of cancer cells compared to %EE. Consequently, it can be stated that curcumin‐loaded starch particles have good potential as drug delivery systems for osteosarcoma therapy. Hydrophobicity and fast degradation of curcumin at biological pH impede its effective practical usage. To address such limitations, curcumin is encapsulated in the starch micro/nanoparticles. In vitro results confirmed that curcumin encapsulation improves its cytotoxic effect on an osteosarcoma cell line while it has no cytotoxic effect on stem cells which implies that these particles are potential candidates for osteosarcoma therapy.