Chitosan and carboxymethyl cellulose coated on NH2-UiO-66 as green, biocompatible, nontoxic, and pH-stimuli responsive for levofloxacin delivery: A comparative study.

Recently, developing an efficient and green approach to overcoming bacterial resistance in drug delivery systems has remained a significant challenge. This work is supposed to design and create two novel, green, biocompatible nanocarriers by incorporating levofloxacin-loaded NH2-UiO-66 into the chitosan and carboxymethyl cellulose biopolymers. The structural characteristics and antibacterial activity of the synthesized carriers were analyzed using FT-IR, SEM, BET, XRD, TGA-DTA, zeta potential, DLS, swelling analysis, ZOI, MIC, MBC, and MTT techniques. The in vitro release rate of the levofloxacin at acidic and neutral environments from the NH2-UiO-66/levofloxacin/carboxymethyl cellulose was 78±2.1% and 18±1.9% and from the NH2-UiO-66/levofloxacin/chitosan was 86±3.5% and 69±2.9% respectively, over 72 h. Kinetics studies showed that the Corsmeyer-Peppas and Higuchi models predicted the release mechanisms of NH2-UiO-66/levofloxacin/carboxymethyl cellulose (R2=0.97) and NH2-UiO-66/levofloxacin/chitosan nanocarriers R2=0.97, respectively. Additionally, studies of the antibacterial properties showed that two NH2-UiO-66/levofloxacin/carboxymethyl cellulose and NH2-UiO-66/levofloxacin/chitosan nanocarriers were more effective against Staphylococcus aureus bacteria than Escherichia coli bacteria. The MTT assay showed that after 48 h, the NH2-UiO-66/levofloxacin/carboxymethyl cellulose nanocarrier with a concentration of 8 mg/mL exhibited lower cell viability compared to the NH2-UiO-66/levofloxacin/chitosan nanocarrier. Overall, these developed nanocarriers hold promise as advanced drug delivery systems due to their strong antibacterial properties.