Antioxidant studies of chitosan nanoparticles containing naringenin and their cytotoxicity effects in lung cancer cells.

Chitosan based nano carrier systems have been widely explored owing to its reliability and simpler synthesis route. In the current study, chitosan (CS) encapsulated naringenin (NAR) nanoparticles (CS-NPs/NAR) were synthesized by ionic gelation method mediated by tripolyphosphate (TPP) as a cross-linker and characterized by DLS, SEM, Zeta potential, FT-IR and EDS analyses. The encapsulation efficiency of CS-NPs/NAR was determined by Folin-Ciocalteau (FC) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) techniques. The native CS-NPs were found to be sized at 53.2 nm, while an increase in the size to 407.47 nm was observed upon loading with NAR. The encapsulation efficiency of CS-NPs/NAR was identified to be ∼70% by FC method and ∼80% by HPLC method, respectively. The release of NAR from CS-NPs/NAR in simulated gastric fluid was found to be ∼15% and remaining 85% of NAR was entrapped in CS-NPs/NAR. Furthermore, the free radical scavenging ability of CS-NPs/NAR was studied by Nitrate scavenging, 2, 2-diphenyl-2-picryl hydrazyl hydrate and hydroxyl radical scavenging assays. The free radical scavenging activity was significantly higher in CS-NPs/NAR. MTT based cytotoxic analysis also depicted the non-toxic nature of CS-NPs/NAR towards normal fibroblast 3T3 cells, while cytotoxic effects were noticed against A549 lung cancer cells. Hence, the current investigations showed the superiority of chitosan encapsulated NAR over free NAR and suggested an efficient system for delivering NAR with antioxidant and anticancer activities.