Cell response and application of nanoparticles and nanofibers

Abstract

The development of hydrogels and nanomaterials in recent years has attracted tremendous research interest in their biological applications. Supramolecular hydrogels are formed by small molecular self-assembling into three-dimensional networks of nanofibers in aqueous phase; they have achieved considerable developments in drug delivery, biosensing, tissue engineering, and wound healing. Nanoparticles with different compositions and surface modifications have also been extensively investigated as drug delivery vehicles, tumor targeting agents, and anti-cancer agents. In this work, the bioapplications of two kinds of nanoparticles were examined. The designed FePt@CoS2 and FePt@Fe3O4 yolk-shell nanoparticles showed enhanced anti-cancer activity comparing to cis-platinum due to their Pt containing cores and porous shells. Au@antibiotics can significantly increase the antibacterial activity of native antibiotics as the abundant among of antibiotics presented on the Au surface allow it to perform strong multivalent effect. Also, two intracellular hydrogel systems were studied. Enzymatic hydrogel system based on Nap-FFYp showed strong synergic effect with anti-cancer agent taxol. The preliminary results on taxol-FFFFYp implied that the motif of taxol-hydrogelator may ultimately lead a new approach to reduce the efflux of the drug molecules caused by multidrug resistance.

Date of Award	2008
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology