With the aim of developing new and effective drug delivery systems for cancer treatments, great effort has been devoted to the field of porous metal–organic framework (MOF) platforms because of their controlled drug release performance, high drug loading, and acceptable biocompatibility. In this contribution, we report a MOF [Gd2(H2O)3(SDBA)3](DMA)3] (1, DMA=N,N-dimethylacetamide) with open O donor sites functionalised 1D pores, which has been fabricated using a bent polycarboxylic acid organic linker 4,4′-sulfonyldibenzoic acid (H2SDBA) under solvothermal conditions. Single crystal X-ray diffraction (SCRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), elemental analysis, X-ray powder diffraction (XPRD), and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) analysis were used to characterise the as-prepared complex 1. 5-Fluorouracil (5-Fu) loaded 1 was soaked in phosphate buffer saline (PBS) and the invitro drug release performance was monitored by HPLC analysis under different pH conditions. At the pH values of 7.4 and 6.5, different profiles of pH-responsive release were achieved, indicating that the drug release performance of 5-Fu loaded 1 is pH sensitive. Grand Canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) simulation results demonstrate that the open O donor sites in the framework of 1 account for the slower drug release rate. The prepared carrier is found to be bio-compatible with MG63 cells (cancerous tissue) and oral epidermal cells (normal tissue), when tested by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. The 5-Fu loaded carrier also shows a promising growth inhibition effect towards the human bone tumour cells MG63.
Modeling the Human Bone–Tumor Niche: Reducing and Replacing the Need for Animal Data