Forming Vesicles from Carbon Nanotubes
نویسنده
چکیده
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are essentially layers of graphite seamlessly wrapped into cylinders. They have shown great potential in a wide variety of applications. One prospect in bioengineering is to utilize CNTs for drug delivery by forming micelles or vesicles from aligned tubes. These structures would essentially be spherical nanocontainers with short carbon nanotube arrays forming the wall of the chamber. The nanotubes that constitute these arrays can be made amphiphilic by functionalizing only one end of the tube with a hydrophilic molecule, since CNTs are naturally hydrophobic. Amphiphilic molecules naturally configure so that their nonpolar ends are away from aqueous solution (in the core of the structure) while the polar ends are next to the aqueous solution (on the outside surface). Nanotubes that have been functionalized with a polar molecule on one end could be influenced to aggregate into such arrangements by altering the dimensions of the tubes, since short and straight amphiphilic nanotubes have a good chance of forming micelles spontaneously. The nanotubes would mimic the behavior of phospholipids in water, self-assembling into micelles in aqueous solutions. If successfully developed, these micelles could be used for transport of poorly soluble drugs, such as many anticancer agents. Vesicles, which have a bilayer membrane of nanotubes, could also be formulated, and could be used to transport water-soluble drugs since both the inner and outer walls would be hydrophilic.
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تاریخ انتشار 2006