Synthesis of Folic Acid-Modified DOX@ZIF-8 Nanoparticles for Targeted Therapy of Liver Cancer

The effective chemotherapy treatment for liver cancer patients remains an urgent issue due to the difficulty in precisely delivering drugs to the tumor site. The targeted delivery of drugs by nanoparticles is a promising strategy to address this problem. However, the fabrication of drug targeted delivery nanosystem still remains a major challenge. In this study, a novel folic acid-functionalized (doxorubicin, DOX) DOX@ZIF-8 nanoparticles (DOX@ZIF-8-FA) were prepared as a liver cancer-targeted drug delivery system. The delivery nanosystem exhibited a high drug loading capacity (15.7 wt%) and presented excellent drug-sustained release performances and good pH-responsive properties. Compared with free DOX and DOX@ZIF-8 nanoparticles, the DOX@ZIF-8-FA nanoparticles displayed much higher anticancer efficiency in HepG2 cells, suggesting that the folic acid-functionalized DOX@ZIF-8 nanoparticles have promising applications in targeted treatment of cancer cells.