Current Nanoscience - Volume 5, Issue 2, 2009

The success of anti-cancer therapy largely relies on the development of high-efficient, low-toxic, long-circulated, and cancertargeted drug delivery systems. Currently used pharmaceutical nanocarriers, such as polymeric nanoparticles (NPs), liposomes, micelles, nanoemulsions, and many others demonstrate a variety of useful properties, including long circulation in the blood allowing for their accumulation in cancer sites with fen Read More

This review article discusses about the current cancer treatment techniques and the extensive recent research studies done on nanoparticles as carrier systems for the delivery of anticancer drug molecules in cancer treatment. A variety of nanoparticles of different structural and chemical formulations have been tested for their target-specificity and as drug carrier systems. Numerous scientific research works have been pe Read More

Nanotechnology is an area of science devoted to the design, construction and utilization of functional structures on the nanometer scale (often 100nm or smaller). Therapeutic applications of nanotechnologies include the treatment of cancer liver diseases. Avoiding the recognition by the liver is also possible by developing long circulating polymeric colloidal carriers (“stealth” systems) able to avoid the opsonisation process Read More

Water-soluble, thiol protected cadmium telluride CdTe quantum dots (QDs) exhibit size dependent excitation/emission wavelength tunability. The heating period ensuring the growth of CdTe nanocrystals capped with thioglycolic acid (CdTe@TGA) in aqueous solution is critical to reach a required/desirable diameter. Thus, reaction medium was monitored using a capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) technique in order to se Read More

Due to their small size and red-shifted excitation and emission bands, lead sulfide (PbS) near-infrared (NIR) quantum dots (QDs) are potentially promising optical contrast agents for in vivo tumor imaging applications. In this phantom-based study, we correlated PbS NIR QD concentrations to feasible imaging depths. A fluorescence imaging system (FIS) was used to acquire images of QDfilled tumor models, which were embed Read More

In engineering and materials science, nanotechnology has made significant advances in the reduction of free radical damage. Despite such advances, there has been little application to biomedical problems. Cross-disciplinary interactions and the application of this technology to biological systems has led to the elucidation of novel nanoparticle antioxidants. Oxidative stress and free radical production are associat Read More

Iron oxide Ferromagnetic Nanoparticles (FNs) such as magnetite (Fe3O4) and maghemite (γ-Fe2O3) are currently employed in biomedical applications owing to their relatively high biocompatibility. Recently, we have introduced a novel application of Fe3O4 FNs in the so-called Magnetically Assisted Haemodialysis (MAHD), a promising concept that can be employed for the treatment of End-Stage Renal Disease. Read More

Biomedical and biotechnological applications of polymeric nanotubes and nanorods have been of increasing recent research and development interest. Many new methods for the preparation and characterization of these novel nanomaterials have been developed. There are currently intensive research efforts to explore their potential applications in various medical fields, including clinical diagnostic assays, bioseparati Read More

Over the past few years, nanoscience and nanotechnology has emerged as a new exciting field in which studies on micro- and nanoscaffolding for tissue regeneration have become a focus exclusively. Micro- and Nanocomposite materials that can provide the appropriate matrix environment, integrate the desirable biological cues, as well as provide for the controlled, sequential delivery of multiple growth factors for different st Read More

The ferroelectric thin film was widely investigated in detail in recent years. The ferroelectric properties of the thin films are obviously dependent on the microstructure and orientation of the film, which were influenced mainly by some processing parameters for preparing the films, including precursor solution chemistry, nature of substrate, film thickness, and condition of heat treatment etc. In this paper, these processing de Read More

CrSb films with various thickness were deposited on KCl (100) substrates by magnetron sputtering. Strong ferromagnetism was observed in the CrSb films, which can be attributed to the ferromagnetic zinc blende-CrSb (ZB-CrSb) phase. The ZB-CrSb film with critical thickness about 5 nm is sufficiently thicker to be investigated the half-metallic nature of ZB-CrSb and to be practically applied in spintronics devices.

A simple and efficient dynamic model of oscillatory surface electrons under coulombic attraction is developed to illuminate the mechanism of split and shift fashion of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) in non-spherical symmetric gold nanoparticles. In this model, the oscillatory electron cloud has been simplified into a charged mass point. So the geometrical factors of the particle are introduced to the dynamic equation. And th Read More

Proper selection of oils, surfactants and cosurfactants along with their optimum concentration is crucial to obtain stable, mild and clinically acceptable nanoemulsions. The focus of the present study was, therefore, to provide an efficient screening approach for the excipients selection for the optimum nanoemulsion formulation development. The oils studied included Lauroglycol 90, Capryol 90, olive oil, jojoba oil, oleic a Read More

Here we show the fundamental processes on nanoscale that may influence the design and extension of nanotechnology chips, sensors, and systems. The focus is on the breakdown of Ohm's Law in nanoscale devices extensively being used to assess the performance of a “system-on-a-chip,” may it be for bio, chemical, physical or engineering applications. Novel insights on theories of three sources of transformation of Read More

This study describes synthesis of FeCo nanoparticles by using a method which couples electrodeposition of metals with the employment of high power ultrasound. A 20 kH titanium alloy horn ultrasound generator, a “sonoelectrode”, generated short current pulses which were triggered and followed by ultrasonic pulses. The primary role of ultrasound is to induce cavitation phenomenon in the electrolyte and the ablation of th Read More

This study concentrates to investigate the relationship between laser fabrication parameters and reflectivity of fiber gratings. The fiber Bragg grating system, comprising Excimer Laser, Mask Aligner, Optical Spectrum Analyzer and Tunable Laser Source was utilized to fabricate the fiber gratings. A series of experiments were carried out for the fabrication of fiber gratings and to observe the effect of laser fabrication para Read More

New cholesterol-saccharide conjugate gelator N-cholesteryl succinyl glucosamine (1) was synthesized and its gelation ability was evaluated in organic solvents in this study. It could gelate 1-butanol, iso-butanol, 4-heptanol, cyclohexanol and 1-octanol under the concentration of 5.0 mg/mL. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), circular dichroism (CD) and small-angle X-ray diffraction ( Read More

A modified solid state reduction (SSR) method, by which the platinum salt is reduced into platinum nanoparticles by sodium formate in solid state and under low temperature (below 180 °C) conditions, is introduced here. The high performance catalysts based on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) supported platinum and platinum promoted by Mo (VI) and Si (IV) was prepared successfully by this method. The catalysts, with small pa Read More