Encapsulation of an anticancer drug Isatin inside a host nano-vehicle SWCNT: a molecular dynamics simulation

The use of carbon nanotubes as anticancer drug delivery cargo systems is a promising modality as they are able to perforate cellular membranes and transport the carried therapeutic molecules into the cellular components. Our work describes the encapsulation process of a common anticancer drug, Isatin (1H-indole-2,3-dione) as a guest molecule, in a capped single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) host with chirality of (10,10). The encapsulation process was modelled, considering an aqueous solution, by a molecular dynamics (MD) simulation under a canonical NVT ensemble. The interactions between the atoms of Isatin were obtained from the DREIDING force filed. The storage capacity of the capped SWCNT host was evaluated to quantify its capacity to host multiple Isatin molecules. Our results show that the Isatin can be readily trapped inside the volume cavity of the capped SWCNT and it remained stable, as featured by a reduction in the van der Waals forces between Isatin guest and the SWCNT host (at approximately − 30 kcal mol−1) at the end of the MD simulation (15 ns). Moreover, the free energy of encapsulation was found to be − 34 kcal mol−1 suggesting that the Isatin insertion procedure into the SWCNT occurred spontaneously. As calculated, a capped SWCNT (10,10) with a length of 30 Å, was able to host eleven (11) molecules of Isatin, that all remained steadily encapsulated inside the SWCNT volume cavity, showing a potential for the use of carbon nanotubes as drug delivery cargo systems.