DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.amamed.2022.012
Publication date: 22nd April 2022
In the last decades, inorganic nanoparticles have been steadily gaining more attention from scientists from a wide variety of fields such as material science, engineering, physics, or chemistry. The very different properties compared to that of the respective bulk, and thus intriguing characteristics of materials in the nanometre scale, have driven nanoscience to be the centre of many basic and applied research topics. Moreover, a wide variety of recently developed methodologies for their surface functionalization provide these materials with very specific properties such as drug delivery and circulating cancer biomarkers detection. In this talk we describe the synthesis and functionalization of magnetic and gold nanoparticles as therapeutic and diagnosis tools against cancer.
Gold nanoprisms (NPRs) have been functionalized with PEG, glucose, cell penetrating peptides, antibodies and/or fluorescent dyes, aiming to enhance NPRs stability, cellular uptake, and imaging capabilities, respectively. Cellular uptake and impact were assayed by a multiparametric investigation on the impact of surface modified NPRs on mice and human primary and transform cell lines. Under NIR illumination, these nanoprobes can cause apoptosis. Moreover, these nanoparticles have also been used for optoacoustic imaging, as well as for tumoral marker detection using a novel type of thermal ELISA and LFIA nanobiosensor using a thermosensitive support.