Back to Basics: Exploiting the Innate Physico‐chemical Characteristics of Nanomaterials for Biomedical Applications

Abstract

In nanomedicine design, emphasis is centered on the engineered impacts of the nanomaterials (NMs). However, failure to understand the unintended effects of nanomaterials on the cell biology can affect the overall performance, approval, and adoption in the clinic. Much of these unintended effects arise from unique physico-chemical properties of the NMs. This feature article discusses some of the key physico-chemical parameters of NMs and highlights how they could cause unexpected and novel biological responses, with some insights into their underlying mechanisms.

Flexible hollow nanofibers: Novel one-pot electrospinning construction, structure and tunable luminescence–electricity–magnetism trifunctionality

“…A series of characteristic emission peaks between 450 nm and 650 nm can be observed due to the energy level transitions of 5 D 4 ? 7 F 6 (490 nm), 5 Furthermore, when the mass percentages of Tb(BA) 3 phen are varied from 120% to 180%, both the excitation and emission intensity markedly increase, and then only slightly increase when the mass percentages of Tb(BA) 3 phen continue to increase from 180% to 210%, as more clearly seen from the inset of Fig. 6.…”

“…More recently, with the rapid development of materials science, much emphasis has been put on hollow micro/nanomaterials owing to their promising applications, such as catalysis [1], drug release [2], sensoring [3], energy storage [4] and biomedical engineering [5]. One-dimensional (1D) hollow nanomaterials, including nanotubes and hollow nanofibers, have attracted increasing interests during past decades because of their unique structure, high surface area and novel properties.…”

On‐the‐Spot Immobilization of Quantum Dots, Graphene Oxide, and Proteins via Hydrophobins

“…Moreover, interfacing nanomaterials and proteins on this new nanoenabled support could provide advanced bioanalytical tools, [ 50 ] and its use could be expanded to the study of nanomaterial-cell interactions. [1][2][3]30,54,87,88 ] The proposed glass nano biofunctionalization is easily scalable through the latest reported techniques, [ 56 ] quick, and environmental friendly allowing a cost-effective modifi cation.…”

“…[ 1 ] Nanosized materials revealing new fascinating properties (neither displayed by the bulk materials nor by the discrete molecules) and very high surface-area-to-volume ratio are progressively being integrated in the next-generation biomolecular devices in several fi elds such as nanomedicine, (bio)analytical chemistry, and bioelectronics. [ 2,3 ] Graphene oxide (GO) and semiconductor (III-V and II-VI) quantum dots (QDs) are two of the most studied optically DOI: 10.1002/adfm.201502837 active nanomaterials exhibiting extraordinary nanoscale properties. QDs are also known as colloidal luminescent semiconductor nanocrystals, generally measuring 1-10 nm.…”

Anti-migratory and increased cytotoxic effects of novel dual drug-loaded complex hybrid micelles in triple negative breast cancer cells

“…In addition to being biodegradable, they can solubilize highly hydrophobic compounds. Their small size (10-100 nm) is expected to not only facilitate cellular uptake [30][31][32], but also enable them to penetrate deep into tumors via enhanced permeability and retention (EPR), and even possibly induce endothelial leakiness or "nanoEL" effects [2,[33][34][35]. The nanomedicine forms of drugs have enhanced their cytotoxic effect on various types of disease, including tough-to-treat triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) [36][37][38][39].…”