Carbon nanotube-protein carriers enhance size-dependent self-adjuvant antibody response to haptens

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are nanomaterials with interesting emerging applications. Their properties make CNTs excellent candidates for use as new nanovehicles in drug delivery, immunization and diagnostics. In the current study, we assessed the immune-response-amplifying properties of CNTs to haptens by using azoxystrobin, the first developed strobilurin fungicide, asamodel analyte. Anazoxystrobin derivative bearingacarboxylated spacer arm (hapten AZc6) was covalently coupled to bovine serum albumin (BSA), and the resulting BSA-AZc6 conjugate was covalently linked to four functionalized CNTs of different shapes and sizes, varying in diameter and length. These four types of CNT-based construc…