Curcumin possesses numerous medicinal benefits including anti-cancer and anti-viral properties. However, its wide scale use as a drug is often hindered owing to the dearth of suitable drug-delivery systems which can solubilise it for long-term sustained-release and safeguard its beneficial properties. In this work, a fast, one-step method, employing evaporation induced assembly of colloids, has been employed for the synthesis of curcumin encapsulated organic-inorganic hybrid micron-sized spheres. Detailed physical properties of the microspheres, with scaffolds of silica nanoparticles (∼8.5 nm) cross linked by chitosan, are studied to trace the underlying mechanism of structural assembly in such systems, by tuning the polymer matrix with solubilizing agents, DMSO and Tween 20. A systematic modification in the hydrogen bonding network, conformations and interactions between macromolecules is revealed upon tuning the organic matrix. This in turn is found to control the assembly vis-à-vis the granular morphology, drug entrapment and packing fraction of nanoparticles in the microspheres, which have direct influence on the biological properties. Consequently, the microspheres are found to follow a first order drug release kinetics with a tunable rate constant which follows the ordering of packing fraction of silica nanoparticles in the micro-granules. A sustained curcumin release for a period extending up to 24 h has been achieved. Further studies using human lung and cervical cancer cell lines assert good anti-cancer properties of these nanostructured microspheres in cancer cells, while showing no toxicity towards normal cells. Thus, such hybrid organic-inorganic formulations achieved using multi-component colloidal assembly approach, with enhanced stability against degradation, are promising candidates for future clinical applications of water-insoluble drugs.

姜黄素具有许多药用价值，包括抗癌和抗病毒特性。然而，由于缺乏合适的药物递送系统，可以将其溶解以长期持续释放并保护其有益特性，因此其作为药物的广泛使用往往受到阻碍。在这项工作中，采用蒸发诱导胶体组装的快速一步法已被用于合成姜黄素封装的有机-无机杂化微米级球体。通过用增溶剂、DMSO 和吐温 20 调整聚合物基质，研究了微球的详细物理性质，该微球具有由壳聚糖交联的二氧化硅纳米粒子（~8.5 nm）支架，以追踪此类系统中结构组装的潜在机制。氢键网络的系统修改，大分子之间的构象和相互作用在调整有机基质时被揭示。这反过来又被发现可以控制相对于微球中纳米颗粒的颗粒形态、药物包埋和包装分数的组装，这些对生物特性有直接影响。因此，发现微球遵循具有可调速率常数的一级药物释放动力学，该速率常数遵循微粒中二氧化硅纳米粒子的填充分数的排序。已经实现了长达 24 小时的持续释放姜黄素。使用人肺癌和宫颈癌细胞系的进一步研究表明，这些纳米结构微球在癌细胞中具有良好的抗癌特性，同时对正常细胞没有毒性。因此，