Author(s):
1. Sašo Šturm,

Abstract:
Cancer becomes a major health care concern across the globe. Widely established cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy along with treatment success deliver a variety of unwanted side effects due to the delocalized application methods that make it impossible to treat a target site alone. However, both surgical and drug-based treatments pose a great risk to a patient. Therefore, the primary challenge in advancing cancer treatment has become a development of combined diagnostic, drug delivery, and drug release system, where the anticancer drug can be administered in minimal doses needed and delivered directly to the specific tumours. In such treatment, the side effects on healthy tissue can be minimized substantially and the healing efficiency can be increased. In view of this, special interest is recently focused on magnetic- and optically-active nanostructures, since they possess several advantages over the bulk counter-parts. For example, they can be conveyed by means of externally applied magnetic fields to the specific target in the body that requires the precise delivery of medicines. On the other hand, hollow nanostructures made of noble metals, allow fine-tuning of the plasmonic absorption over a broad spectral range extending deep into the NIR region where optical absorption in tissue is minimal and penetration is optimal. At appropriate design of noble metal-based nanostructures photothermal ablation of cancer cells can be achieved by converting near-infrared (NIR) light into heat. In the presented work we will show first results on synthesis and characterization of various hollow nanostructures, which are potentially suitable for biomedical applications. For that purpose, two magnetic binary alloys, Fe-Pd and Co-Pt, were used. The composition and crystal structure of hollow nanostructures were characterized by scanning/transmission electron microscopy (STEM/TEM) combined with energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDXS) and electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS).

Key words:
drug delivery, drug release, photothermal, TEM, EELS

Thematic field:
SYMPOSIUM B: Biomaterials and nanomedicine

Date of abstract submission:
17.05.2012.

Number of visits:
528

Conference:
Contemporary Materials - 2012 - Savremeni materijali

Applied paper from author