Nel Schulte

Master student

Optimized synthesis of albumin coated SPIONs for magnetic drug delivery

Supervisor: René Stein, Prof. Aldo R. Boccaccini, Prof. Christoph Alexiou

 Conventional cancer therapy by chemotherapeutic agents suffers from severe side effects such as infertility, nausea, anemia, immunosuppression, cardiotoxicity or diarrhea ¹. Magnetic drug targeting with superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) is a suitable candidate to overcome these drawbacks of high systemic dose cytotoxic agents, because of their low toxicity and excellent magnetic properties ². The biological and physicochemical properties of the nanoparticles are strongly influenced by their surface composition, which also immediately changes by protein adsorption in biological fluids ³. Human serum albumin (HSA) is the most abundant plasma protein in the human body, thus highly biocompatible and readily available ⁴. Furthermore it is FDA approved and widely used in the development of drug delivery systems (DDS) for several drugs such as Doxorubicin, Paclitaxel, Methotrexate or Mitoxantrone to treat cancer and brain diseases ⁵. However, it is still challenging to reliably transfer the nanoparticle systems from the lab-scale to clinical trials. The goal of this project is to develop an efficient synthesis route for albumin coated SPIONs as a magnetic drug delivery vehicle to path the way to larger scales. The work is performed for a particle system developed at the Section of Experimental Oncology and Nanomedicine (SEON), led by Prof. Dr. med. Christoph Alexiou, in collaboration with the Institute of Biomaterials, led by Prof. Aldo R. Boccaccini.

(1)  Ajith, S.; Almomani, F.; Elhissi, A.; Husseini, G. A. Nanoparticle-Based Materials in Anticancer Drug Delivery: Current and Future Prospects. Heliyon 2023, 9 (11), e21227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e21227.

(2)  Friedrich, R. P.; Janko, C.; Unterweger, H.; Lyer, S.; Alexiou, C. SPIONs and Magnetic Hybrid Materials: Synthesis, Toxicology and Biomedical Applications. Physical Sciences Reviews 2023, 8 (8), 1435–1464. https://doi.org/10.1515/psr-2019-0093.

(3)  Gebauer, J. S.; Malissek, M.; Simon, S.; Knauer, S. K.; Maskos, M.; Stauber, R. H.; Peukert, W.; Treuel, L. Impact of the Nanoparticle–Protein Corona on Colloidal Stability and Protein Structure. Langmuir 2012, 28 (25), 9673–9679. https://doi.org/10.1021/la301104a.

(4)  Nateghian, N.; Goodarzi, N.; Amini, M.; Atyabi, F.; Khorramizadeh, M. R.; Dinarvand, R. Biotin/Folate‐decorated Human Serum Albumin Nanoparticles of Docetaxel: Comparison of Chemically Conjugated Nanostructures and Physically Loaded Nanoparticles for Targeting of Breast Cancer. Chem Biol Drug Des 2016, 87 (1), 69–82. https://doi.org/10.1111/cbdd.12624.

(5)  Lee, S. Human Serum Albumin: A Nanomedicine Platform Targeting Breast Cancer Cells. Journal of Drug Delivery Science and Technology 2019, 52, 652–659. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jddst.2019.05.033.