Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
9.3 EUROPE
Maurizio PRATO
@Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Trieste, Italy
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Expertise: Functionalisation of carbon-based materials for biomedical
applications
Prato's research group includes about 20 members focused on organic
functionalisation of carbon based-materials (mainly fullerenes, carbon
nanotubes and graphite) for potential applications in materials sciences
and medicinal chemistry. Representative examples are energy storage
devices, based on electron-acceptor materials such as fullerene-porphyrin
and fullerene-ferrocene hybrids, or fulleropyrrolidines possessing a DNA
minor groove binder and an oligonucleotide chain or even unnatural fullero
aminoacids as building blocks for the construction of nanotube- or fullerene-
based peptides. The group, working in strong collaboration with Dr Alberto
Bianco (CNRS, Strasbourg, France) and Prof. Kostas Kostarelos (School of
Pharmacy, London), has gained attention worldwide by developing puriication
processes and synthetic procedures (e.g., 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of
azomethine ylides, which has been extensively used) of diversiied carbon
allotropes, in view of promising therapeutic applications.
9.3.1. Drug Delivery and Other Biomedical Applicaons
Among the latest projects developed by this group, it is worth mentioning
the delivery of siRNA from CNT-based dendron (more details on this
article have been provided in chapter 5).
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Branched structures, made
up of polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrons, were covalently linked to the
surface of MWCNTs via the 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of azomethine ylides.
The following incorporation of ethylenediamine and methyl acrylate in a
divergent approach originated more dendritic-type structures. The presence
of PAMAM dendrons guaranteed the solubility of the tubes in aqueous media,
while the luorescent siRNA was subsequently conjugated with the MWCNT
dendrons at a 1:16 mass ratio on the basis of previous optimisation.
173
It was
observed that the cellular uptake of the siRNA was nanotube-dependent,
i.e., the higher the extent of the branching, the more eficient the delivery
of siRNA. Notably, almost no uptake of siRNA alone was observed under
the same experimental conditions, thus suggesting that an eficient release
of siRNA inside target cells might trigger the desired effect of suppressing
a gene implicated in a particular disease. More precisely, on the basis of
previous evidence that CNTs promote highly eficient cytoplasmic transport
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