Silica based particles for use as artificial viruses

PAULA C. ANGELOMÉ; LUIS M. LIZ-MARZÁN

Santiago de Compostela

Workshop; II Workshop on Nanomedicine Research; 2009

A virus is an infectious agent that can affect all cellular life and that is unable to grow or reproduce outside the host cell. Viral particles have diameters ranging between twenty to a few hundreds of nanometres, and their envelope contains proteins, which can interact with specific receptor in the cell’s membrane they infect. Surface modified inorganic nanoparticles can be used to mimic virus. Studying the way these particles interact with vesicles or cells can help to understand the way the real virus works and, also, could have interesting consequences for applications such as in drug delivery. In this work we have synthesized silica and Au@SiO2 particles for their use as model artificial virus, using different methods based on Stober synthesis [1,2]. The particles must meet two requirements: be fluorescent, to be detected during the biological tests, and have proper functions on the surface, to allow the protein attachment. To follow the first requirement, a fluorophore was included in the synthesis media in order to be incorporated into the particles by encapsulation. Different conditions and concentrations were explored in order to obtain detectable particles. After obtaining the fluorescent particles, with variable diameters in the range 80 – 200 nm, their surface was modified by reaction with aminosilanes (that attaches to the surface through a covalent bond). After this step, proteins could be incorporated onto the surface through a series of well known reactions. During all the reaction steps, the particles were characterized by TEM, UV-vis spectroscopy, FTIR and fluorescence measurements.