Abstract
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Polycaprolactone nanocapsules incorporated with triazole derivatives in the presence and absence of selenium nanoparticles were prepared and evaluated as antiproliferative and anticancer agents. Polycaprolactone nanoparticles were prepared using the emulsion technique. EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH: The prepared capsules were characterized using FT-IR, TEM and DLS measurements. The synthesized triazolopyrimidine derivative in the presence and absence of selenium nanoparticles encapsulated in polycaprolactone was tested for its in vitro antiproliferative efficiency towards human breast cancer cell line (MCF7) and murine fibroblast normal cell line (BALB/3T3) in comparison to doxorubicin as a standard anticancer drug. KEY RESULTS: The results indicated that encapsulated polycaprolactone with selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs) and triazole-SeNPs were the most potent samples against the tested breast cancer cell line (MCF7). On the other hand, all compounds showed weak or moderate activities towards the tested murine fibroblast normal cell line (BALB/3T3). CONCLUSION: As the safety index (SI) was higher than 1.0, it expanded the way for newly synthesized compounds to express antiproliferative efficacy against tumour cells. Hence, these compounds may be considered promising ones. However, they should be examined through further in-vivo and pharmacokinetic studies.