CYTOTOXICITY OF MAGNETITE-LOADED POLYLACTIDE, POLYLACTIDE GLYCOLIDE PARTICLES AND SOLID LIPID NANOPARTICLES/

Particles from polylactide (PLA), polylactide/glycolide (PLA/GA) and s olid lipid nanoparticles (SLN) were produced and loaded with different amounts of magnetite, The in vitro cytotoxicity was determined to ass ess their toxicological acceptance as intravenous formulation for magn etic resonance imaging and as potential carrier for drug targeting. Vi ability determinations were performed in suspensions of human granuloc ytes using the dimethylthiazolyl-diphenyltetrazolium (MTT) test. Parti cle internalization by the granulocytes was followed using luminol enh anced chemiluminescence (CL). The effective concentrations to reduce t he viability to 50% (ED 50%) were 0.38% and 0.30% for high and low mol ecular weight PLA, 0.15% for PLA/GA. The mechanism of toxicity is the intracellular uptake, with the highest toxicity being observed for the faster degrading polymers, low molecular weight PLA and PLA/GA. The s olid lipid nanoparticles proved to be the least cytotoxic preparation with an effective concentration (ED 50%) above 10%.