Fabrication and biocompatibility assessment of polypyrrole/cobalt II metal-organic frameworks nanocomposite

Abstract

Nowadays, metal-organic frameworks MOFs have emerged as promising tools for different biological applications and therefore, efforts are ongoing to develop more biocompatible MOFs-based nanocomposites. We aimed to fabricate some new conductive nanocomposites of polypyrrole and cobalt-MOF with different weight percentages PPy/x%Co-MOF usingthesolutionmixingmethodandcharacterizethemthroughFT-IR Fourier-transforminfrared , PXRD powder X-ray diffraction , SEM scanning electron microscope , and TEM transmission electron microscope techniques. The biocompatibility of nanocomposites was assessed by haemolytic, cytotoxic, and quantitative reverse transcription PCR qRT-PCR assays. FT-IR and PXRD results revealed that nanocomposites consisted of pure MOFs and PPy. Moreover, SEM results indicated their spherical morphology along with an average diameter of 190 nm. 3- 4,5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl -2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide MTT assay showed a concentration, and percentagedependent cytotoxic effect of the nanocomposites on some cell lines including 3T3 fibroblasts, MCF-7, and J774.A1 macrophages. HaematologicaltoxicityofPPy/x%Co-MOFcompositeswaslessthan7%inmostconcentrations. Furthermore, PPy/x%Co-MOF composites did not show any significant effect on the expression of cyclooxygenase-2 COX-2 and inducible nitric oxide synthase iNOS genes. In sum, regarding the haemolytic, proinflammatory, and cytotoxic tests, prepared nanocomposite demonstrated the reasonable in vitro biocompatibility which may be considered as a hopeful platform for further investigations including clinical applications.