Project: Targeting of cancer cells with single-walled carbon nanotubes

5 Nov 2007 - This is a short overview about my recent research: In general, my work deals with covalent functionalisation of carbon nanotubes for targeting of cancer cells. Covalent functionalisation mostly begins with introducing carboxylic acid groups by nitric acid treatment. I determined the concentration of carboxylic groups by acid-base-titration. Afterwards, I performed several coupling experiments. First, I coupled a plasmid to the nanotubes, using the polycationic polymer "polyethyleneimine" as a linker. The attachment was confirmed by gel electrophoresis. The next step of this experiment will evaluate if this setup is also suitable to deliver the plasmid into mammalian cells. Furthermore, I labelled the nanotubes with the dye "Fluorescein" to make the nanotubes visible in mammalian cells. This worked quite well, but I am still working on the quality of the pictures obtained by confocal microscopy. As we discovered, that oxidised and RNA-wrapped nanotubes precipitate in cell culture medium after some time, I performed some stability studies and found out, that the salt concentration is the main factor that causes precipitation of the nanotubes. The pH had a much smaller effect than expected and can be neglected, as the pH in cell media is always physiological. To overcome this difficulties, it helps to wrap oxidised nanotubes with RNA or BSA. My work in the next months will focus on visualizing carbon nanotubes in mammalian cells by different staining methods and then on targeting the cancer cells with specific antibodies.


Investigation of carbon nanotubes produced within the CARBIO network by means of SEM - Report