Gold nanorods and magnesium nanoparticles embedded into synthetic and natural biopolymers: non-toxic nano-heaters for cancer therapy
Mauro Comes Franchini
(Department of Industrial Chemistry "Toso Montanari”. University of Bologna)
In the current communication, the coating and polymeric entrapment of GNRs absorbing in the NIR window and the effective binding capacity of the newly developed nanosystems toward cencer cells was assessed using optoacoustic microscopy. In vitro and in vivo investigation of the selective laser-induced cell death on cancer cell-line and tumor-bearing mice will be shown.
As a further step “Green nanotechnology” refers to the development of clean technologies, which should minimize the potential environmental and human health risks associated with the use of nanotechnology products, and encourage the replacement of existing products with new, less toxic, nanomaterials. The introduction of safer metals would certainly be an important point along this route and recently, there has been increasing interest in magnesium as biomaterial. We present herein the synthesis of magnesium nanoparticles with a salt reduction methodology, their coating with organic ligand and their entrapment into synthetic and natural biopolymers. We proved the possibility of generating a temperature rise of a few to several degrees once nanoparticles batches were illuminated with a 810 nm diode laser operating in continuous wave (cw) mode and we have investigated whether the photothermal response could vary as a function of Mg concentration.
Following these protocols therefore novel highly biocompatible nano/microsystems are characterized and tested as a suitable and non-toxic tools for photothermal therapy and nanomedicine applications.
