Fabrication of supramolecular fluorescent amphiphilic particles for application in nanomedicine

K. WNUK; F. NADOR; F. NOVIO; D. RUIZ-MOLINA

Bellaterra (Barcelona)

Workshop; 3rd Workshop on Nanomedicine UAB CEI; 2014

Amphiphilic molecules containg a hydrophobicand a hydrophilic part, play an important role in fundamental science andindustrial applications. Due to their dual nature, they display richself-assembly behaviour in solutions and are surface active when thesesolutions are brought into contact with another liquid, gas or solid phase withdifferent polarity [1].We report the fabrication and characterizationof supramolecular fluorescent particles based on amphiphilic organic moleculesthat consist of pyrene hydrophobic head and a catechol based hydrophilic part.This novel supramolecular system has been investigated in different aspectssuch as the concentration-dependent behaviour, stability in different solventsand optical properties. Moreover, additional theoretical calculations have beenperformed to understand the molecular interactions that afford thesupramolecular association.We proved that the morphology of thesupramolecular association is determined by solvent nature and/or moleculesconcentration, and this supramolecular assembly can be selectively controlledand tuned in different manners. We have been able to synthesize novelamphiphilic molecules and the reaction conditions to control assembly processeswere optimized. Meanwhile in methanol the increasing concentration ofamphiphilic organic molecules results on well-defined nanoparticles withinteresting fluorescent, in the case of water solutions the material show nosupramolecular association and a decrease of fluorescence.This combination allows open an interestingresearch line based on this new smart material which offer excellent physical,chemical and optical properties and a wide variety of possibilities to be usedas nanocarriers for drug delivery due to the smart response to environmentalstimuli or in bioimaging applications for diagnosis in medicine due to theirfluorescent properties.