Bacterial cellulose nanoparticles as a sustainable drug delivery platform for protein-based therapeutics

Abstract

Sustainable nanomedicine is an emerging field aiming to address the challenges of scalability, reproducibility, thermal stability, and excessive waste generation for nanotherapeutic manufacturing. Bacterial cellulose (BC) fibers have the potential to overcome these challenges and be a versatile drug delivery platform. Here we report the development of BC nanoparticles (BCNPs) for sustainable drug delivery applications motivated by the material's biodegradability upon environmental disposal and biocompatibility, which are important properties for nanomedicine applications. In addition, BCNPs formulation has a reduced environmental impact, an overall eco-friendly life cycle, and can be implemented following green engineering principles. In this study, we fabricated BCNPs grown in a kombucha medium in agitated and aerated conditions for 24 h and size separated using centrifugation and polysorbate 80 as a surfactant. The produced particles are approximately 100 nm in diameter and have a slightly negative zeta-potential and predominantly amorphous morphology. We also investigated the growth of BC fibers after 1, 3, and 5 days and evaluated the BC's time-dependent physicochemical properties using X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and thermogravimetric analysis. We report primarily amorphous BCNPs obtained after culturing for 1 day, while longer culture duration leads to larger BC particles comprised of fibers with increasing degree of crystallinity. Moreover, we show BCNPs are thermally stable up to 90 °C. We performed proof of concept studies to show drug loading capability by incorporating bovine serum albumin (BSA) as a model drug and quantified sustained release of BSA. These results further motivate the use of BCNPs as a promising nanotherapeutic platform.