LAUSR

Abstract Halloysite nanotubes have been gradually applied in the field of biomedicine, due to their attractive properties including biocompatibility, nontoxicity, hydrophilic and low-cost. Here, polyglycerol (PG) is used to wrap the surface of Hal to yield Hal-PG, so that there are a large number of hydroxyl groups on the surface of Hal-PG. Then, Hal-PG-FA nanocomplexes were prepared by combining folate (FA) with Hal-PG via esterification reaction. Thereafter, doxorubicin (DOX) was loaded on novel targeted anticancer delivery system Hal-PG-FA that can bind specifically to tumor cells that overexpressed the folate receptor. The obtained nanomaterials were fully characterized using FT-IR, TEM, XPS, TGA and DLS techniques. Moreover, the anticancer activity of Hal-PG-FA/DOX was detected by Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK8) and flow cytometry (FCM). In vitro cytotoxicity assay preliminarily proved that the Hal-PG-FA/DOX had a more significant inhibitory effect than the free DOX. The results of flow cytometry showed that apoptosis rate on HeLa cells was enhanced by Hal-PG-FA/DOX. All these results showed that folate-PG modified halloysite is an excellent nano anticancer drug carrier in cancer therapy.