Mesoporous iron oxide nanoparticles loaded with ciprofloxacin as a potential biocompatible antibacterial system

Nowadays, infectious diseases are still a great challenge for human health. Bacterial infections are one of the primary causes of worldwide mortality. Due to the development of resistance processes, the search for therapeutic alternatives has focused on many researchers of biomedical areas. In this sense, antimicrobial drugs' encapsulation has emerged as a relevant alternative, capable of improving the therapeutic effectiveness, while a significant reduction in the side effects can be observed. Following in this same direction, in the present work, mesoporous iron oxide nanoparticles (MIONs), loaded with ciprofloxacin, were prepared, aiming to evaluate the system's potential application against bacterial infections. MIONs and silanized MIONs (MIONs@APTES) were prepared, presenting an average size below 100 nm and a superficial area of 258.27 and 186.27 m2 g−1, respectively. Both samples allowed to load relevant amounts of the drug, reaching a high incorporation rate and a controlled release profile, with different kinetics behavior, when incubated with simulated body fluid (SBF). The in vitro evaluation revealed that fabricated systems display biocompatible profiles over normal human cell lineage, where no significant cytotoxic profile was observed. However, it presented relevant antibiofilm (S aureus strain) properties when compared to controls constituted by free ciprofloxacin and nanoparticles without the drug. From all Results obtained in this work, the produced nanosystems can be considered a potential system to be applied in bacterial infection treatment.