Maize Starch

Corn starch is an important biological and renewable resource with wide applications in industries. In this work, for the first time, debranched corn starch (DS), as a natural carrier, was introduced to load high-melting-point hydrophobic anti-cancer drug paclitaxel (PTX) through efficient molecular interaction to afford a loading system, debranched corn starch-paclitaxel (DS–PTX). DS with a high degree of polymerisation was mainly responsible for PTX loading, which exhibited a higher DL (34.9% ± 0.72%). The PTX–loaded DS–PTX was successfully isolated and characterised for the first time to exist as a nanostrip crystal with an average length and an average diameter of 870 ± 290 and 160 ± 20 nm, respectively, which was different from that of raw PTX. DS–PTX was found to be a weak V-type crystalline system consisting of H-bonds, van der Waals forces and hydrophobic interaction between PTX and DS molecules. The DS–PTX was digested in vitro and showed that DS–PTX significantly reduced PTX release in artificial gastric juice (AGJ). After 24 h digestion in artificial intestinal fluid (AIF), DS–PTX exhibited the highest value of cumulative release of PTX (94.8% ± 0.91%) among other starch-based oral loading systems, which suggested nearly 100% digestion and significant enhancement of nano-PTX solubility. The normal cell cytotoxicity experiment exhibited that DS–PTX has lower cytotoxicity than raw PTX. DS–PTX could thus be believed as efficient molecular interactions, nearly 100% digestion and high safety. Loading high-melting-point hydrophobic drugs onto the DS carrier could pave a new way for corn starch application.

Fig. 2 DS was successfully loaded with the anti-cancer drug PTX via molecular interactions. (Zhuang X, et al. 2025)