Eggshell derived Se-doped HA nanorods for enhanced antitumor effect and curcumin delivery

Using natural resources to prepare biomedical materials becomes the focus of current researches. This work presented the Se-doped HA nanorods, which were synthesized using waste eggshell by co-precipitation and hydrothermal route, aiming at the application of the therapy of bone tumor postoperatively. The synthetic products exhibited dispersive nanorods morphology with a length of about 50 nm and a width of 6 nm. And the physicochemical characterization indicated these nanorods with main phase of hydroxyapatite, and they exhibited excellent loading effect for curcumin and slowly stable controlled release fashion in the physiological buffers. 1.38% of the curcumin initially loaded into the nanorods was released into PBS solution over 159 h. Additionally, they exhibited good blood compatibility because of no hemolytic response and cytotoxicity with the healthy whole blood. Together, the Se-doped HA nanorods, not only possess the synthetic advantages such as simple-operation, resource-saving, pollution-free, but also serve as a promising nano-carrier for antitumor drug delivery applied in the onco-therapy of bone tumor and bone regenerative medicine.