Amphiphilic starlike dextran wrapped superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticle clsuters as effective magnetic resonance imaging probes

A fluorinated dendrimer achieves excellent gene transfection efficacy at extremely low nitrogen to phosphorus ratios

“…These materials are easy-to-manufacture and have superior safety compared with viral gene vectors; however, their commercial and clinical applications are limited by relatively low transfection efficacy and poor cell viability after transfection [8][9][10][11] . Functionalization of polymers with amino acids 12 , lipids 13 , cyclodextrins 14 , peptides 15 , other polymers 16 and inorganic nanoparticles 17 can improve their transfection efficacy and biocompatibility to some extent, but the resulting materials are still not efficient enough to justify clinical uses.…”

Polymeric nanoparticles for optical sensing

“…Very recently, such a technique has been applied for in vitro imaging of a glioma cell line by using an azido-terminal fluorescein derivative, which was first synthesized and then reacted with a copolymer bearing alkyne groups (Pucci et al, 2013). As reported elsewhere (Lutz and Zarafshani, 2008), this procedure can also be used to functionalize inorganic nanomaterials, such as magnetic and gold NPs (Álvarez-Paino et al, 2013, Su et al, 2013, silica beads or quantum dots (QDs) (Tissandier et al, 2012). The latter are semiconductor nanocrystals, in the size-range of 1-10 nm, composed of sulphides, selenides or tellurides of heavy metals (groups II-VI, III-V, or IV-VI of the periodic table) characterized by high photostability, wide absorption spectrum, intense and typically narrow emission spectrum, large Stokes shift and size-tunable emission (Sahoo et al, 2007).…”

Multifunctional dextran micelles as drug delivery carriers and magnetic resonance imaging probes

“…1a) and SA-alkylated dextran T10 (Fig. 1b) [46], the grafted ratio of SA was about 0.6, which means each saccharide units were grafted with approximate 0.6 SA chains.…”

“…The size of Mn-SPIO nanocrystals was then confirmed by dynamic light scattering (DLS, Nano ZS, Malvern, UK) in anhydrous hexane at room temperature. According to our previous work [46], stearyl acidgrafted dextran Dex-g-SA was synthesized by the reaction between carbonyldiimidazole (CDI, Sigma-Aldrich, USA)-activated SA (Sigma-Aldrich) and dried dextran T10 (M w = 10,300, Pharmacia, Sweden). The as-prepared polymer Dex-g-SA was impure as mixture and needed precipitating twice with ethyl acetate.…”