A recent paper “Investigation of novel superparamagnetic Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4@albumen nanoparticles for controlled delivery of anticancer drug” (published in “nanotechnology, 2017 Sep;28 (36)”) has been selected and featured in the 2018 issue of Biomedical Advances, because of its innovation and potential for significant impact.
The published article can be found in the following link:
http://biomedical-advances.org/newtech-20181-7/
This paper has been authored by Dr. Dibakar Das, a Professor in the School of Engineering Sciences and Technology (SEST), Mr Mohd Qasim a PhD research scholar in Nanoscience and Technology, Ms. Khushnuma Asghar a PhD research scholar in Material Engineering at the School of Engineering Sciences and Technology (SEST), University of Hyderabad and Dr. Gangappa Dharmapuri, a Post-Doc Fellow in the Department of Animal Biology at the School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad.
Biomedical Advances (ISSN 2573-0355) is a website focusing on cutting-edge biomedical research from around the globe. Biomedical Advances is dedicated to being on the lookout for biomedical breakthroughs that embody exploration, innovation and significant promise for pharmaceutical development and clinical application. The website receives more than 10,000 visits per month from an international audience of academic and industrial researchers and developers, providing greater opportunity for your results to be recognized and appreciated.
“The result of our present study is promising and show that the biocompatible, inexpensive, scalable magnetically guidable and pH responsive nanoformulation could be very much useful for targeted and controlled delivery of anticancer drugs for cancer treatment”, said Mohd Qasim, who is the first author of the paper.
Summary of physicochemical properties of NZF@Alb-Dox NPs
The present work was carried out at the Laboratory of Functional Ceramic Materials (https://www.lofcm-das.com/) headed by Prof Dibakar Das in the School of Engineering Sciences and Technology, University of Hyderabad, India. Prof. Dibakar Das is currently a Professor in the School of Engineering Sciences and Technology (SEST) at the University of Hyderabad, India. He obtained Ph.D. from IIT Bombay in 2004. Dr. Das carried out a significant part of his thesis work at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) Boulder, USA. Following Ph. D., he joined the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in 2004. After three and half years of postdoctoral research at the University of Cincinnati, he joined Sinmat Inc. in Gainesville, Florida, USA, as a Senior Scientist, in 2007. Serving Sinmat for about 2 years he joined the School of Engineering Sciences and Technology (SEST) at the University of Hyderabad in 2009 August. Dr. Das is elected fellows of the Indian Institute of Ceramics (IIC) and Telangana Academy of Sciences (TAS). He has published more than 90 peer-reviewed articles in journals and conference proceedings of international repute. His research interest includes CMP of WBG semiconductors, lead-free piezoelectric ceramics, ferrite ceramics for magnetoelastic, magnetoelectric, multifuntional magnetic nanomaterials, drug nanocarriers, nanocomposite and their biological applications.
Brief write up about the research
Cancer is one of the deadliest diseases in today’s world. Conventional anticancer drugs have several limitations including harsh side effects in human body. Loading anticancer drug in a magnetic nanocarrier and then parcelling it to the targeted tumour site offer several advantages and minimize the side effects of the drug. In the present investigation, superparamagnetic nickel zinc ferrite (Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4) and albumen protein nanoparticles (NPs) have been combined to produce multifunctional nanocarrier for tumour diagnosis and therapy. For the first time, a novel, pH responsive, water dispersible, biocompatible, inexpensive and magnetically targetable multifunctional Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4@Egg albumen (NZF@Alb) and doxorubicin (Dox) loaded Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4@albumen (NZF@Alb-Dox) core-shell nanoparticles has been developed by a facile and environmental friendly process using inexpensive chicken egg albumen, NZF NP and Dox (the schematic is shown in Figure 1). An extensive characterization of the synthesized nanocarriers shows suitable physiochemical properties (shown in figure 2) for magnetically targetable and controlled drug delivery applications for cancer treatment. The present study is expected to have significant effect on the advancement of albumin based nanocarriers design and development for biomedical applications. These new research findings have great potential to pave the way for the formulation of variety of novel nanocarriers for cancer diagnosis and therapy using inexpensive and biocompatible biopolymers-based sources.