Nanospheres

Nanospheres List

Nanospheres refer to solid colloidal spherical particles with a size of 1-100nm, which can be widely used in fields such as protein analysis and purification technology, gene chip technology, and large-scale microcarrier culture technology for mammalian cells, etc..

Figure 1. Three-dimensional structure of carbon Fullerene nanospheres.

Applications:

• Protein separation medium: In the field of biotechnology, nanospheres are used as fillers for the preparation of separation media, mainly for chromatographic analysis and separation and purification of proteins and other biological macromolecules. Nanosphere materials used for protein separation media are divided into two categories: inorganic and organic. The former uses silica gel as a matrix to prepare microspheres, which are mainly used for chromatographic separation, purification and purity testing of inactive proteins. There are many kinds of organic nanospheres, including cross-linked agarose nanospheres, cross-linked dextran nanospheres, polyacrylamide nanospheres, polyphenylethene nanospheres, polyvinyl alcohol acetate nanospheres, polymethacrylate nanospheres, polyether nanospheres and so on.
• Cell culture microcarriers: With the continuous discovery of new materials and the continuous improvement of nanospheres manufacturing technology, nano-carriers of various materials have been developed and applied to the large-scale culture of all kinds of mammalian cells. For example, cross-linked agarose carrier, cross-linked dextran carrier, chitin carrier, gelatin carrier, polystyrene carrier and other composite nanospheres cell culture carrier and so on.
• Drug carriers: Drug sustained release technology is a new type of drug carrier technology, which makes use of the specificity of the distribution of degradable polymer nanospheres of different sizes, as well as the biocompatibility that is not recognized by the immune system. The loaded drugs are delivered directly to the disease site, slowly release, increase the local drug concentration, and prolong the efficacy, to achieve the purpose of slow-release and targeted drug delivery in the disease site. Because this technology can solve many difficult problems that affect the efficacy of drugs, it is of great value in clinical application.

Figure 2. Porous hollow carbon nanospheres for cancer treatment.

• Gene transfection vector: Gene transfection vectors are mainly used to treat human congenital or acquired diseases that are caused by genes and are difficult to cure. Nanospheres gene transfection vector has many advantages, such as safety, biocompatibility, structural designability, controllable particle size, stability, slow-release, and can avoid polymer accumulation in vivo after repeated administration. The main nanospheres used in gene transfection are metal nanoparticles, inorganic non-metallic nanoparticles, biodegradable high-score nanoparticles and raw material particles. Among them, biodegradable polymer nanoparticles are the most promising, such as poly (lysine) microspheres, polyethyleneimine microspheres, polyamide-amine dendrimer microspheres and so on.
• Biochip: Nanospheres are used for the preparation of biochips, mainly for the preparation of sensitive element carriers in liquid phase chips. Carboxyl, amino, hydroxyl, or other biological functional groups are introduced into the surface of nanospheres, which can be used to construct sensitive elements of liquid phase chips and to carry out high-throughput and high-specificity analysis and detection of biomolecules such as nucleic acids and proteins. Such as tumor marker screening and so on.

References

1. Kohler N, Sun C, Wang J. (2005) “Metrotex-modified superparamagnetic nanoparticles and their interjectural implacable.” Langmuir. 21 (19): 8858
2. Lingmin Zhang. (2017) “Hollow carbon nanospheres for targeted delivery of chemotherapeutics in breast cancer therapy.” J. Mater. Chem. B, ,5, 6601-6607