Recently, the authoritative journal of Biomaterials Advances (Impact Factor: 8.457) published the latest research paper, entitled “Construction of targeted delivery system for curcumin loaded on magnetic α-Fe₂O₃/Fe₃O₄ heterogeneous nanotubes and its apoptosis mechanism on MCF-7 cell”. School of Pharmacy, Jiangsu University is the first unit, and associate professor Ruijiang Liu is the first author. (Paper link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bioadv.2022.212783)

This research reported a novel hollow-structure magnetic α-Fe₂O₃/Fe₃O₄ heterogeneous nanotube and its preparation method. The hollow-structure α-Fe₂O₃/Fe₃O₄ heterogeneous nanotubes have a high specific surface area, a large volume structure, rich hydroxyl functional groups, and good biocompatibility. Thus, the encapsulation efficiency of curcumin was increased to 82.1±0.9%, and the sustained release effect of curcumin was significantly improved using magnetic α-Fe₂O₃/Fe₃O₄ heterogeneous nanotubes as nanocarriers. The favorable magnetic property of magnetic α-Fe₂O₃/Fe₃O₄ heterogeneous nanotubes not only avoided the agglomeration but also effectively improved the targeting effect of curcumin and its accurate positioning in the target area. The ferroptosis mechanism and apoptosis mechanism of breast cancer cell MCF-7 through the delivery system were investigated, and it was confirmed that α-Fe₂O₃/Fe₃O₄-CUR@LIP nanocomposite under magnetic field could enhanced cells late-apoptosis by adjusting the expression of apoptosis-related proteins, activate redox reactions in cancer cells, inducing the production of endogenous ROS.

In this paper, curcumin was used as a loading model to construct a nano-drug delivery system of traditional Chinese medicine, which not only provided a new idea for nano-drug loading and delivery of Chinese traditional medicine components but also displayed a new approach for the modernization of Chinese traditional medicine, which had significant practical value.