Microfluidic platform for encapsulation of plant extract in chitosan microcarriers embedding silver nanoparticles for breast cancer cells

In this study, the controlled synthesis of microcarriers and CpE loading were aimed to achieve by microfluidic system. The effect of temperature on chitosan in the stabilization of silver nanoparticles, microcarrier size and the encapsulation efficiency was measured. Encapsulation was achieved by the controlled rapid mixing in polymethyl-methacrylate (PMMA) microfluidic chip. The CpE was found to contain primary and secondary phenols in the phytochemical screening. The capping property of chitosan was achieved by heating reaction mixture in polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) tube to get the stabilized silver nanoparticles which were found to be embedded in chitosan microspheres of size 23.7 µm on average. Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) and ultraviolet–visible (UV–Vis) spectroscopy results indicated the successful encapsulation of CpE in microcarriers. The average percentage encapsulation efficiency (% EE) of CsAg was found to be 77.125 ± 6.9%. The CpE-loaded microcarriers had shown significant anti-oxidant activity ( p < 0.01). CpE-loaded microcarriers were evaluated to have robust cytotoxicity against 4T1 breast cancer cells at very low dose (IC 50 = 42.53 µg/mL), which inhibited 95% of cancer cells viability. These results confer that microfluidic system plays an important role in the formation of CpE-loaded CsAg microcarriers that could effectively ( p < 0.0001) kill the breast cancer cells.