Novel polysaccharides-based nanoparticle carriers prepared by polyelectrolyte complexation for protein drug delivery

Polyelectrolyte complexation, as one simple and promising method for preparing nanoparticles, is employed to find the use in the delivery of protein drugs. Using this method, we fabricated one kind of novel nanoparticles based on two natural polysaccharides, which are the negatively charged carboxymethyl pachyman (CMP) and the positively charged chitosan (CS). The major effect factors on the average particle size, polydispersity, and zeta potential of the nanoparticles were studied. The research indicated that the physicochemical properties of the nanoparticles were deeply affected by the molecular weight, concentration, and the ionic content of two polysaccharides. The mean particle size of CMP/CS nanoparticles was almost in the range of 100–200 nm for various preparation conditions. The morphology of nanoparticles characterized by a transmission electron microscope was spherical in shape with smooth surface structure. In order to study the feasibility of these nanoparticles as oral protein delivery carriers, the encapsulation efficiency of CMP/CS nanoparticles for bovine serum albumin (BSA) was evaluated for optimized condition. It turned out that the encapsulation efficiency of BSA-loaded CMP/CS nanoparticles varied from 30.1 to 52.9% depending on the initial loading concentration of BSA as well as the concentration of CMP and CS employed in particle formation, which indicated that the concentration of polymers and drugs were all contributed to the encapsulation efficiency of nanoparticles. This report opened up another interesting perspective to develop these natural polysaccharides with emerging new applications, which have great potentials in application in the nanoparticulate delivery system.