Development of functional gold nanoparticles

Thanks to their unique properties, gold nanoparticles are widely used to address some of today’s scientific challenges, particularly in biomedicine, including diagnostics, imaging, biosensing, phototherapy, and targeted drug delivery. However, even these unique nanoparticles have their limitations, some of which can be overcome by combining them with polymeric materials. Such “composite” nanoparticles may find applications as highly effective contrast agents capable of reaching their target site precisely and with minimal invasiveness. The polymer coating not only provides the desired compatibility with the biological environment but can also be further modified to interact actively with specific biological structures.

Our colleague Michal Babič, Ph.D., together with his collaborators, has developed a new method for preparing gold nanoparticles with a functional polymer coating. Surprisingly, they also discovered that their nanoparticles generate a unique signal. This property opens up the possibility of using these innovative nanoparticles as nanoprobes for imaging in biological environments. The results of their research have been published in the prestigious scientific journal Small.

“We believe that this work has opened up a new and very simple route to preparing polymer and hydrogel materials containing gold that benefit from the synergy between the properties of polymers and gold,” said Michal Babič. The researchers can provide each nanoparticle with a stable polymer coating. The nanoparticles are not only suitable for use in biological environments but also carry a molecular motif that produces a very strong contrast signal. Put simply, they can be thought of as having a unique and easily recognisable “barcode”. They can therefore act as probes that are readily detected, distinguished from the surrounding biological environment, or tracked to determine where they are located within an organism. It is precisely this property that the IMC researcher plans to exploit in his research focused on developing nanoparticles for the non-invasive intranasal delivery of active substances, supported by the Czech Science Foundation.

Developing functional gold nanoparticles for non-invasive diagnostic applications remains a major challenge, and IMC researchers are making important progress in this area. Innovations in the preparation of polymer-coated gold nanoparticles offer new material possibilities for the further development of nanotechnology. Ongoing research will show to what extent their potential as advanced materials can be translated into biomedical applications.

You can read more in our press release or in the popular science online magazine ScienceMag.cz.

 

Congratulations to the entire team, and we wish them every success in their continued research.