Magneto-fluorescent carbon coated superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoarchitectures (SPIONs) for multimodal imaging and cancer theranostics (PhD)

Abstract

Cancer has been, and still remains, one of the most chronic disease to treat. As a result of severe adverse effects experienced from current cancer treatment and clinical trial studies, there has been a consistent growing interest in the development of an efficient cancer theranostics system that can effectively cure the cancer, but render healthy tissue unharmed. A prior objective of the present thesis was to develop such cancer nanotheranostics systems and evaluate their therapeutic efficacy in real time cancer theranostics with full proof of concept strategies. The central hypothesis of this thesis was to enable multimodal imaging ability in magnetic nanoparticles by associating fluorescence in to their structures and insitu tuning of the magneto-fluorescent properties. Multifunctional magneto-fluorescent nanoarchitectures were developed in an easy and facile single step synthesis method avoiding multistep process and any kind of post synthesis modifications. A full proof of the property tuned synthesis protocol is described and proven through the characterization results. Advanced with the development of three different magneto-fluorescent nanoarchitectures, we evaluated their potential in MR imaging, fluorescence imaging, single particle imaging and tracking respectively. In addition, we also explored the equivalent value for the use of magneto-fluorescent nanoarchitectures in stimuli responsive drug delivery, magnetic hyperthermia, neuroengineering, protein sensing and magnetic field induced fluorescence engineering applications. This thesis successfully achieved all the above biomedical applications and significantly addresses the challenges as stated above and stand potentially in achieving the high throughput results in real time cancer theranostics. In summary, magneto-fluorescent carbon coated superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIONs) nanoarchitectures especially designed to practically confronting property oriented applications, persistent with physio-chemical and biological experimental studies, have been established as a promising proof of concept for real time multimodal imaging, neuroengineering and cancer theranostics in biomedical applications.