Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
18
Interactions of Polysaccharide-
Coated Nanoparticles with
Proteins
Christine Vauthier
CONTENTS
18.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 365
18.2 Synthetic Identity of Polysaccharide-Coated Poly(alkylcyanoacrylate) Nanoparticles........ 368
18.3 Interactions of Polysaccharide-Coated Nanoparticles with Proteins ................................... 371
18.4 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 379
References ...................................................................................................................................... 379
18.1 INTRODUCTION
Nanomaterials occurring as single particles within the nanosize range are small enough to diffuse
in living tissues of the organisms and to penetrate into cells. The synthesis of artificial nanomateri-
als appeared reproducible enough at the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s (Bangham
et al., 1965, see for references Daniel, J.C. 2003). They appeared suitable to serve as drug carriers
(Gregoriadis, 1976; Kreuter and Speiser, 1976; Kreuter, 2007) and attracted an immediate interest
to realize the “magic bullet,” a concept imagined by Paul Ehrlich, winner of the Nobel Prize in
Physiology and Medicine in 1908. The rationale behind this idea was to develop a method of drug
delivery by reducing the severe side effects of the drugs used in chemotherapies of cancer and infec-
tions, thanks to a better targeting of the drug to diseased tissues. The early stages of nanomedicine
development have considered liposomal formulations of chemotherapeutic agents during the 1970s
(Gregoriadis, 1976; Juliano, 1976; Gregoriadis et al., 1974). Since then, the field of nanomedicine
has expanded considerably. Many types of nanomaterials have been proposed to serve as drug car-
riers for not only small molecules but also for biomacromolecules, including therapeutic peptides,
proteins, and all kinds of nucleic acids that can be used to control the expression of a specific gene
and can be applied to gene therapy. Proofs of concept for the delivery of most of these molecules,
considering different modalities for their administration, have now been provided (Couvreur and
Vauthier, 2006; Farokhzad and Langer, 2009; Etheridge et al., 2013; Lehner et al., 2013). Besides
applications that overcome drug delivery challenges, several types of interesting nanomaterials
were found to improve the performance of imaging techniques used in diagnostics (Liu et al., 2011).
Theragnostic, a new nanomedicine field, uses a combination of drug delivery and diagnostics in a
single nanomaterial (Mura and Couvreur, 2012). Finally, several types of nanomaterials can be used
to potentiate the effect of radiotherapy (Bakht et al., 2012). They are used to focus the effects of
radiations after implantation within tumors that enhances the efficacy of the radiotherapy. Several
of these nanomaterials are bringing hope toward the development of noninvasive methods for the
ablation of tumors with the ambition to displace classical surgery.
It is now established that many types of nanoparticles have the potential to revolutionize diagnos-
tic and therapeutic methods (Etheridge et al., 2013; Lehner et al., 2013; Wang et al., 2013). However,
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