Methotrexate anchored carbon dots as theranostic probes: digitonin conjugation enhances cellular uptake and cytotoxicity
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Date
2016-06
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RSC Advances
Abstract
In recent years carbon dots (CDs) have been drawing increasing attention in the area of nano
medicine. Their indubitable roles in cellular imaging, drug delivery and diagnosis are widely
acknowledged. Digitonin (DG) has traditionally been known as a cell membrane permeabilizing
agent. Based on this fact, we modified CDs with DG (CDDG) and further conjugated them with
methotrexate (MX). This probe, CDDG conjugated MX (CDMX) was subjected to physico chemical
characterization, cytotoxic evaluation via MTT assay and cellular uptake studies using confocal laser
microscopy. The drug release study implied that at physiological pH, release is less reflecting
maximum drug retention in the probe during circulation. The results which emerged have shown
that DG is impacted in enhancing cellular uptake and cytotoxic potential of the drug carriers. The
study indicates that theranostic probes with improved features can be generated from CDs by
a judicious modification
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Citation
Krishna A S, Radhakumary C, Priya S S, Ramesan R M Sreenivasan K. Methotrexate anchored carbon dots as theranostic probes: digitonin conjugation enhances cellular uptake and cytotoxicity. RSC Advances. 2016;6:56313-18