Doxorubicin Stability and Retention on PEGylated Graphene Oxide Nanocarriers Adjacent to Human Serum Albumin.

Drug stability and retention on nanocarriers is essential for maximizing the drug targeting and therapeutic efficiency. PEGylation of graphene oxide (GO) as a drug nanocarrier is widely known to prolong its circulation time in the body, thereby increasing the probability of drug delivery system interactions with the proteins in the blood stream. Herein, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were performed to investigate the interactions between doxorubicin (DOX)-loaded GO and PEGylated GO (PEGGO) nanocarriers with human serum albumin (HSA), a prevalent human blood protein and among the first to be adsorbed on the DOX-loaded nanocarriers. The results indicate that drug stability and retention on PEGGO nanocarriers are far more superior to the GO nanocarriers (control) when in contact with HSA. It is also demonstrated in this work that the PEGGO nanocarriers retain the DOX molecules irrespective of the HSA Sudlow site I and II orientations, thereby revealing their robustness in DOX loading.