Poly(amino acid) functionalized maghemite and gold nanoparticles.

Davide Perego, Norberto Masciocchi, Antonietta Guagliardi, José Manuel Domínguez-Vera, Natividad Gálvez

Departamento de Química Inorgánica, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain.

Nanotechnology 2013 Feb 22

filter terms:

Bimodal MRI/OI imaging probes are of great interest in nanomedicine. Although many organic polymers have been studied thoroughly for in vivo applications, reports on the use of poly(amino acid)s as coating polymers are scarce. In this paper, poly-(d-glutamic acid, d-lysine) (PGL) has been used for coating maghemite and gold nanoparticles. An advantage of this flexible and biocompatible polymer is that, once anchored to the nanoparticle surface, dangling lysine amino groups are available for the incorporation of new functionalities. As an example, Alexa Fluor derivatives have been attached to PGL-coated maghemite nanoparticles to obtain magnetic/fluorescent materials. These dual-property materials could be used as bimodal MRI/OI probes for in vivo imaging.

Citation

Davide Perego, Norberto Masciocchi, Antonietta Guagliardi, José Manuel Domínguez-Vera, Natividad Gálvez. Poly(amino acid) functionalized maghemite and gold nanoparticles. Nanotechnology. 2013 Feb 22;24(7):075102