Silica-coated Magnetic Nanoparticles

MARIELA AGOTEGARAY; VERÓNICA LASSALLE

Springer

Año: 2016 p. 110

978-3-319-50157-4

Nanotechnologyis a scientific discipline involving multiple hard sciences such as chemistry,physic, biology, engineering, etc. The occurrence of novel properties whenmaterials are reduced to nanosizes is the main reason for the scientific andtechnological interest in such discipline. In particular nanomedicine, that isnanotechnology applied to medicine, has suffered an exponential grow in thelast decades. The possibility to target the drug in the disease site , avoidingsecondary effects and lowering the required doses, strongly impulse thedevelopment of this kind of technology. Magnetic nanotechnology presents theadditional advantage related to nanosystems that may be easily guided by aid ofan external magnetic field. This property improves the target capability,increasing their potential in biomedical applications such as target drugdelivery or MRI diagnostic. Iron oxides based nanosystems are actually thefavourites to achieve these kinds of issues due to multiple reasons, butfundamentally to their low toxicity and biocompatibility. However the surfacemodification is often required to gain in stability , improve theirphysicochemical properties or even to raise the reactivity by means offunctional groups incorporation. Silica appears as a highly attractive materialto assess this objective.Inthe Introductory section the general aspect of nanotechnology and nanomedicinewill be highlighted. Principles of iron oxides nanoparticles and their silicacoated will be described in a general way.