Synthesis of Fe <sub>3</sub>O <sub>4</sub>/Au/Porous Au Nanoparticles as an Efficient Carrier for Doxorubicin Delivery

Porous gold coated Fe3O4 nanoparticles (Fe3O4/Au/porous Au nanoparticles) as the bi-functional nanoparticles with the properties of magnetism and porosity were synthesized and used for drug-delivery. For this purpose, after synthesis of Fe3O4 nanoparticles, to increase their stability a gold layer was coated on them. Then, for increasing the loading capacity of Fe3O4/Au nanoparticles, a shell of porous gold was synthesized on the Fe3O4/Au surface. For this purpose, first an Ag-Au hybrid layer was created on Fe3O4/Au and then using HNO3 (0.01 M) the metallic silver atoms were dissolved and porous gold shell was formed on Fe3O4/Au nanoparticles. Finally, doxorubicin (DOX) as a sample was loaded on the Fe3O4/Au/porous Au nanoparticles. The thus prepared nano-drug was able to enhance therapeutic efficacy of DOX on MCF-7 cancer cells comparing to the free DOX. This results confirmed 1.5 times improvement of antitumor activity of DOX loaded Fe3O4/Au/porous Au nanoparticles.