Preparation of hollow core/shell Fe3O4@graphene oxide composites as magnetic targeting drug nanocarriers.

A main challenge for anticancer drugs is that the drugs can not arrive the cancer tissue at right time. In this work, a magnetic targeting nanoparticle based on hollow Fe3O4/graphene oxide (Fe3O4/GO) was developed as a potential tumor targeting drug carriers. The morphology results showed the Fe3O4 nanoparticles were uniformly wrapped by graphene oxide. After coating with graphene oxide, the Fe3O4/GO showed a higher saturation magnetization of 71.47 emu g-1 as compared to neat Fe3O4 nanoparticles. The drug loading and releasing experiment indicated the obtained Fe3O4/GO has a good loading capacity of of 0.41 mg mg-1 for 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and a positive sensitive of acidic atmosphere. The CCK-8 assays of CMEC viability demonstrated the hollow Fe3O4/GO nanocarriers do not statistically exhibit toxicity with the concentration increasing from 2.5 to 40 μg mL-1 in vitro. These results suggested the prepared Fe3O4/GO has a potential application in anticancer drugs nanocarriers.