pH-responsive delivery of hydrophobic anticancer drugs using boron and nitrogen Co-doped carbon dots as fluorescent nanocarriers

In recent years, carbon dots have attracted considerable attention within the nanocarbon family due to their remarkable advantages and interesting properties such as high solubility, biocompatibility, tunable photoluminescence, and so on. Carbon dots can also be designed and synthesized according to the desired functionalities (such as sensors, biosensors, or drug delivery systems). In the present study, nitrogen- and boron-co-doped carbon dots (abbreviated as "NBCDs") were successfully used as highly fluorescent and efficient nanocarriers to load two hydrophobic anticancer drugs, namely curcumin (CUR) and paclitaxel (PTX). The NBCDs were characterized before and after conjugation with CUR and PTX using spectroscopic techniques. After calculating the drug loading capacity (LC%) and adsorption efficiency (AE%) of the NBCDs nanocarriers, the drug release behavior was evaluated in two buffer media (pH 5.0 and pH 7.4) using the dialysis bag method for 72 h. Finally, the pH-dependent release behavior of the drugs was analyzed using several kinetic models.