Lipophilic effect of various pluronic-grafted gelatin copolymers on the quercetin delivery efficiency in these self-assembly nanogels

In this study, pluronics (P123, F127, F87 and F68) and their gelatin modified pluronic (GP) forms (GP-P123, GP-F127, GP-F87 or GP-F68) were used to investigate the effect of gelatin conjugation as well as the lipophilic properties of each pluronic on quercetin (QU) delivery. The anti-cancer property of QU was also evaluated using breast cancer (MCF-7) and cervical cancer (HeLa) cell lines. The QU are encapsulated in the GP nanogels via self-assembly process. Their structures were characterized by 1 H-NMR and TGA. All GP nanogels performed significant higher loading efficiency compared to bare pluronic form. The size distribution of the QU-loaded GP nanogels ranged from 79.52 ± 3.22 nm to 152.51 ± 4.97 nm. The study interestingly shows that of the grafted pluronic induced the QU loading efficiency due to its higher hydrophobicity. Indeed, pluronic P123-grafted gelatin exhibited the highest QU entrapment efficiency of up to 93.02 ± 3.7%. Our obtained results indicated that the QU-loaded GP nanogels performed a sustained release ability of QU compared to pluronic-based micelles. The QU-loaded GP-P123 system performed higher activity against growth of HeLa and MCF7 cancer cell lines compared to the free QU. The preliminary results could offer a further study via co-encapsulation of the QU and anti-cancer drugs for enhancing effectiveness in chemotherapy.