Student: Martin Janata
Vedoucí: Xiaohui Ju, Ph.D.
Stav projektu: dokončený
Anotace:
Nanotechnology has already greatly impacted medicine. Most recently, it has been found that cerium oxide nanoparticles (CNP) possess antioxidant activity at physiological pH values, and it has the potential use in biomedical applications to protect against oxidative stress. It is noteworthy that biological applications of CNP based agents usually require durable CNP solutions stable against aggregation, this brings about the necessity of development of methods for their synthesis and characterization. Various polymer additives and coatings are used to produce colloidal solutions of CNPs with higher solubility and stability. When bound to proteins, they may be quickly cleared by macrophages before they can reach target cells. One possible approach to increase the circulation time of nanoparticles in blood stream is to modify the particles surface to disperse them and minimize protein adsorption. The electrostatic interaction, which contribute to the protein adsorption, can be controlled by variation in their surface charges, which can be determined by measuring the zeta potential of these particles. In the present study, we will analyze effects of zeta potential variation of polymer coated CNP on protein adsorption. A better understanding of protein adsorption will improve the ability to control conformation, orientation, and stability which will allow us to make tailored surfaces for bio reactivity. Serum albumin is the most abundant protein found in human blood. The knowledge of adsorption of albumin to ceria surface is very important because once in the body, blood proteins will adsorb to the particles and cells will then react with the adsorbed proteins on the particles which will ultimately affect cellular uptake and can alter biochemical activity. To determine binding of ceria to albumin, we use bovine serum albumin (BSA) as a model.