mPEG-PLGA Nanoparticles Labelled with Loaded or Conjugated Rhodamine-B for Potential Nose-to-Brain Delivery
Nowdays, neurodegenerative diseases represent a great challenge from both the therapeutic and diagnostic points of view. Indeed, several physiological barriers of the body, including the blood brain barrier (BBB), nasal, dermal, and intestinal barriers, interpose between the development of new drugs and their effective administration to reach the target organ or target cells at therapeutic concentrations. Currently, the nose-to-brain delivery with nanoformulations specifically designed for intranasal administration is a strategy widely investigated with the goal to reach the brain while bypassing the BBB. To produce nanosystems suitable to study both in vitro and/or in vivo cells traffickin…
Colloidal lithography and Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition process integration to fabricate ZnO nanohole arrays
A complete set up of optimal process conditions for an effective colloidal lithography/catalyst assisted MOCVD process integration is presented. It mainly focuses on the determination of the deposition temperature threshold for ZnO Metal-Organic Chemical Vapour Deposition (MOCVD) as well as the concentration of metal-organic silver (Ag) catalyst. Indeed, the optimization of such process parameters allows to tailor the ZnO film morphology in order to make the colloidal lithography/catalyst assisted MOCVD approach a valuable bottom up method to fabricate bi-dimensional ordered ZnO nanohole arrays. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Integration of Metal Organic Chemical Vapour Deposition and Wet Chemical Techniques to Obtain Highly Ordered Porous ZnO Nanoplatforms
Large-area, highly ordered ZnO micropores-arrays consisting of ZnO nanotubes delimited by ZnO nanorods have been successfully fabricated and tested for protein sensing applications. ZnO seed layers have been deposited by Metal Organic Chemical Vapour Deposition and readily patterned by Colloidal Lithography to attain ZnO nanorods growth at selective sites by Chemical Bath Deposition. The used synthetic approach has been proven effective for the easy assembly of ZnO nanoplatforms into high-density arrays. Both patterned and unpatterned ZnO nanorods have been morphologically and compositionally characterised and, thus, tested for model studies of protein mobility at the interface. The pattern…
Ultrathin and nanostructured ZnO-based films for fluorescence biosensing applications
The fluorescence-based sensing capability of ultrathin ZnO-SiO(2) nanoplatforms, deposited by an integrated approach of colloidal lithography and metal organic chemical vapor deposition, has been investigated upon adsorption of fluorescein-labeled albumin, used as model analyte biomolecule. The protein immobilization process after spontaneous adsorption/desorption significantly enhances the green emission of the different ZnO-based films, as evidenced by scanning confocal microscopy, corresponding to a comparable protein coverage detected by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Moreover, experiments of fluorescence recovery after photobleaching evidence that the protein lateral diffusion at th…
Enhanced plasmonic processes in amino-rich plasma polymer films for applications at the biointerface
A new plasmonic biosensor was developed in a planar chip-based format by coupling the plasmonic properties of gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) with the mechanical and bioadhesive features of unconventional organic thin films deposited from plasma, namely primary amine-based plasma polymer films (PPFs). A self-assembled layer of spherical Au NPs, 12 nm in diameter, was electrostatically immobilized onto optically transparent silanised glass. In the next step, the Au NP layer was coated with an 18 nm polymeric thick PPF layerviathe simultaneous polymerization/deposition of a cyclopropylamine (CPA) precursor performed by radio frequency discharge, both in pulsed and in continuous wave modes. The CP…