Oriented functionalization of magnetic nanoparticles with E-cadherin

Moreno Antolín, Eduardo
Fratila, Raluca Maria (dir.) ; Grazú Bonavía, María Valeria (dir.)

Universidad de Zaragoza, CIEN, 2018

Máster en Materiales Nanoestructurados para Aplicaciones Nanotecnológicas (Nanostructured Materials for Nanotechnology Applications)

Resumen: The synergy between nanotechnology and biological science is being exploited in the last years, giving rise to a great amount of knowledge generation and applications in a wide variety of fields. This increasing use of this type of nano-sized materials has awak-ened the interest on the interaction between them and biological entities: cells, tissues or organisms. Among all the types of available nanomaterials, iron oxide magnetic nanopar-ticles have shown a huge potential in the biomedical field due to their biocompatibility and other interesting properties, especially their ability to produce heat when exposed to an external alternating magnetic field. A virtually unexplored subject is the interaction of magnetic nanoparticles with cell membranes of living cells. The study of this topic will have impact on fundamental science (i.e. biophysical studies of the cell membrane under localized heating, changes in heating efficiency of nanoparticles when interacting with living cells) and will allow the development of brand new applications (i.e. hyper-thermia treatment, cell transfection). In the work here presented, E-cadherin has been selected as a targeting agent. It is a ubiquitous adhesion protein present in the cell membranes of many cell types, with im-portant physiological functions and a key role in cancer progression. Spherical magnetic nanoparticles have been functionalized with this protein in an oriented manner, so that they are able to interact with the homologue proteins in the cell membrane. In that way, this is proposed as an approach to immobilize magnetic nanoparticles on the cells sur-face. Two different strategies were designed, one of them showing promising results of the oriented functionalization. However, the efficiency of the process needs to be fur-ther optimized for the future applications of this platform.

Tipo de Trabajo Académico: Trabajo Fin de Master