In the present work, for the first time, co-functionalizing the surface of a core-shell Fe3O4@nSiO2 nanoparticle was performed for transporting doxorubicin anticancer drug (DOX). This core-shell nanoparticle (NP) is composed of superparamagnetic iron oxide core synthesized by solvothermal method and a nonporous silica (nSiO2) layer shell. The nanocomposite shell was co-functionalized with amine group (NH) and folic acid (FA). The characterization results confirmed the superparamagnetic property of Fe3O4@nSiO2 nanoparticle with the average particle size of 75 nm. In addition, the successful co-functionalizing the surface of NPs was confirmed with FTIR analysis. Dox loading on the nanocomposite was performed at the optimum adsorption condition with the entrapment efficiency of 81.5%. In vitro release study showed a very slow release at pH ¼ 7.4 while a relative rapid release within 10 h and a sustained release until 144 h was observed at pH ¼ 5.5. Finally, the in vitro cytotoxicity assay showed that cellular cytotoxicity of DOX-loaded Fe3O4@nSiO2-NHFA on the breast cancer cell lines (MDA-MB-231) is increased considerably in comparison to free DOX. This confirms the improvement of the synthesized nanocomposite structure. All results confirmed that this new synthesized nanoparticle with an appropriate size and cellular cytotoxicity is a suitable candida for drug-delivery vehicles.

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