Drug Loading of Anthracycline Antibiotics on Carbon Dots Using Circular Dichroism Spectrometry

Drug delivery systems using nanoparticles are currently in the panorama of nanomedicine studies. In oncology, chemotherapeutic regimens using anthracycline antibiotics rely on the dosage of treatments to minimize the severity of side effects on the patient. Therefore, even in targeted delivery systems it is of great importance to quantify the level of drug administrated for dosage and quality control of the treatment. Herein, as a feasible pathway to shed light on improving nano drug quantification procedures, we proposed a simple analytical protocol to quantify the anthracyclines loaded on our nonchiral carbon nitride dots (CNDs) with circular dichroism spectrometry (CD). The calibration curves from the linear relation between ellipticity and concentration of the anthracycline drugs followed by measurements on the CNDs conjugates were used in achieving the quantification technique which showed different drug loading for each anthracycline used such as daunorubicin, doxorubicin, and epirubicin.