Multimodal Core-Shell Nanocomposites for Biomedical Applications

Multimodal nanomaterials are an important class of materials in the rapidly developing field of nanoscience. These nanomaterials have deserved a lot of attention due to their wide variety of applications including targeted cell drug delivery, biomedical imaging and cell labelling.¹ The main aim of this project was to develop new magnetic metal carbonate core-shell structures for potential biomedical applications. Calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) and magnetite (Fe₃O₄) were chosen as the functional materials for this research, thus combining the modalities of biocompatibility and magnetisation.^2,3<br/>Magnetic nanoparticles (NPs) have been prepared by a precipitation approach using both Fe²⁺ and Fe³⁺ salts as iron precursors in the presence of poly(sodium styrene sulfonate) (PSS). These stabilised NPs exhibited high monodispersity and stability making them ideal for further functionalization.<br/>For the very first time, the PSS-Fe₃O₄ NPs were encapsulated into CaCO₃ shell by a novel dry ice carbonation method resulting in distinctive morphological structures.<br/>The new composites were loaded with a specific cationic dye as a model to investigate their potential drug uptake and release processes. The testing was monitored using UV-Vis spectroscopy.<br/>This research opens up a route to new multimodal nanomaterials with unique properties making them of great interest.<br/><br/><i>Bibliography</i><br/><br/>1. S. D. Anderson, V. V. Gwenin and C. D. Gwenin, Nanoscale Res. Lett., , DOI:10.1186/s11671-019-3019-6.<br/>2. H. Bahrom, A. A. Goncharenko, L. I. Fatkhutdinova, O. O. Peltek, A. R. Muslimov, O. Y. Koval, I. E. Eliseev, A. Manchev, D. Gorin, I. I. Shishkin, R. E. Noskov, A. S. Timin, P. Ginzburg and M. V. Zyuzin, ACS Sustain. Chem. Eng., 2019, <b>7</b>, 19142–19156.<br/>3. A. G. Niculescu, C. Chircov and A. M. Grumezescu, Methods, 2022, <b>199</b>, 16–27.