Polyethyleneimine-Functionalized Magnetic Fe₃O₄ and Nanodiamond Particles as a Platform for Amoxicillin Delivery

Antibiotics are used to treat many infectious diseases such as urinary tract infection. However, the resistance to antibiotic can increase due to the high-dose exposure to the human body. Alternative methods to lower the dosage of the antibiotics and deliver it to the specific organ are required for a more effective delivery and treatment at much lower dosage. A stable loading of amoxicillin on purified and polyethyleneimine-functionalized nano diamond particles is used along with magnetic nanoparticles for drug delivery in this study. This novel approach is expected to expand the scope of using nano diamond for targeted drug delivery in which nanodiamond is combined with a ferromagnetic material such as Fe₃O₄ to deliver a specific drug to a particular site using an external magnetic field. To this end, the synthesis and loading of the amoxicillin on Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles and combining it with nanodiamond-polyethyleneimine-amoxicillin is investigated in this research. Fe₃O₄ magnetic nanoparticles of cubic spinel structure are synthesized by microwave-assisted techniques, and different combinations of polyethyleneimine loaded ND and Fe₃O₄ are studied. It is shown that a structural configuration consisting of the core of magnetic particles with nanodiamond and polyethyleneimine can load 40 mg of amoxicillin and gradually released it in different media. The results on drug loading and release kinetics are studied and discussed in this paper.