Speaker
Summary
High quality nanoparticles are usually synthesized in high boiling organic solvents. For applications and experiments in biological systems it is necessary to transfer the nanoparticles into aqueous media. Hereby, the demands are the colloidal, chemical and biological stability of the obtained structures. For this purpose, our group recently reported the encapsulation of nanoparticles using an amphiphilic diblock copolymer by the formation of micelles.[1] Furthermore it is possible to functionalize the polymer with affinity molecules following two methods, either before or after the encapsulation (pre-assembly or post-assembly, respectively). Pre-assembly strategies enable the facile characterization of bioconjugated molecules by spectroscopy prior to assembly as well as an improved control over the number of affinity molecules on the micelle surface. The aim of our studies is to achieve a specific bond of the nanocomposites to cell receptors. This could lead to different applications of the nanostructures, for example as tools for specific labelling in diagnostics. Here we present the functionalization of poly(isoprene)-b-poly(ethylene oxide) encapsulated quantum dots with different carbohydrates. Also specific binding of the nanoconstructs to the lectine Concanavalin A could be demonstrated by surface plasmon resonance experiments.[2]
[1] Pöselt, E.; Schmidtke, C.; Fischer, S.; Peldschus, K.; Salamon, J.; Kloust, H.; Tran, H.; Pietsch, A.; Heine, M.; Adam, G.; Schumacher, U.; Wagener, C.; Förster, S.; Weller, H. ACS Nano 2012, 6, 3346–3355.
[2] Schmidtke, C.; Kreuziger, A.-M.; Alpers, D.; Jacobsen, A.; Leshch, Y.; Eggers, R.; Kloust, H.; Tran, H.; Ostermann, J.; Schotten, T.; Thiem, J.; Thimm, J.; Weller, H. Langmuir 2013, 29, 12593–12600.
