The idea comes to us when we realize that we need a vehicle that can travel inside body. The passenger can be drugs, glucose or anything that we really need. The vehicle is designed to reach any part of our body through Vascular System. So the vehicle must have properties like high-carrying capacity, stability, highly controllable and innocuity. Finally we find a suitable one. We call it Magnetic nano-particles. As you can imagine, the vehicle is magnetic so it can be controlled by magnetic field. And the following question is whether it is harmful. The answer is absolutely no. I will explain why later on. The most exciting part is the vehicle have really high-carrying capacity and very stable. To figure out the real function of the vehicle, we use Digoxin to test it.
The Magnetic nano-particles are also called MNP. They refer to the particles that are magnetic with the range of 1-500nm. MNP come from Fe. So it may dissolve in acid environment. So a protective layer is necessary. The particle cannot work without specific group that we can modify. So the first step is to form a SiO2 layer outside MNP. We choose Stöber method.
The Magnetic nano-particles are also called MNP. They refer to the particles that are magnetic with the range of 1-500nm. MNP come from Fe. So it may dissolve in acid environment. So a protective layer is necessary. The particle cannot work without specific group that we can modify. So the first step is to form a SiO2 layer outside MNP. We choose Stöber method.
Figure 1. The step of Stöber method
We create a win-win situation. After the MNP are protected by a layer of SiO2, we try to decorate carboxyl groups (–COOH) on its surface for later modification.
Figure 2. Carboxylation of nano-particles
In this way, our magnetic nano-particles are able to connect to any molecules with rich hydroxyl groups (-OH), such as DNA, RNA, medicine or proteins. But when it comes to the connection problems, we accept our tutor’s advice to use a kind of immobilized lipase.
Figure 3. Connection of molecules to nano-particles
As for experiments, we choose digoxin for a trial. The structure of Digoxin is showed below. So you may understand why we use Digoxin as a test. It has plenty of –OH that can connect to –COOH outside our MNP. But what’s the function of Digoxin? Recent research shows that Digoxin has a great potential in the cancer treatment.