Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been widely utilized as a novel drug carrier with promising future applications in biomedical\ntherapies due to their distinct characteristics. In the present work, carboxylic acid-functionalized single-walled carbon nanotubes\n(f-SWCNTs) were used as the starting material to react with anticancer drug, BA to produce f-SWCNTs-BA conjugate via ????-????\nstacking interaction. The conjugate was extensively characterized for drug loading capacity, physicochemical properties, surface\nmorphology, drug releasing characteristics, and cytotoxicity evaluation. The results indicated that the drug loading capacity was\ndetermined to be around 20 wt% and this value has been verified by thermogravimetric analysis.Thebinding of BA onto the surface\nof f-SWCNTs was confirmed by FTIR and Raman spectroscopies. Powder XRD analysis showed that the structure of the conjugate\nwas unaffected by the loading of BA.Thedeveloped conjugate was found to release the drug in a controlled manner with a prolonged\nrelease property. According to the preliminary in vitro cytotoxicity studies, the conjugate was not toxic in a standard fibroblast cell\nline, and anticancer activity was significantly higher in A549 than HepG2 cell line. This study suggests that f-SWCNTs could be\ndeveloped as an efficient drug carrier to conjugate drugs for pharmaceutical applications in cancer chemotherapies.
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