am8b18304_si_003.avi (2.05 MB)
“Ultramixing”: A Simple and Effective Method To Obtain Controlled and Stable Dispersions of Graphene Oxide in Cell Culture Media
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posted on 2019-01-29, 00:00 authored by Giacomo Reina, Amalia Ruiz, Diane Murera, Yuta Nishina, Alberto BiancoThe
last decade has seen an increase in the application of graphene
oxide (GO) in the biomedical field. GO has been successfully exploited
for its ability to deliver many kinds of drugs into target cells.
However, GO toxicity assessment is still controversial. Several studies
have demonstrated that GO protein coating is crucial to alleviate
the material’s toxicity. Besides, coronation leads to the formation
of big agglomerates, reducing the cellular uptake of the material
and thus its therapeutic efficiency. In this work, we propose a simple
and efficient method based on rapid (ultra-turrax, UT) mixing to control
protein corona formation. Using the UT protocol, we were able to reduce
GO agglomeration in the presence of proteins and obtain stable GO
dispersions in cell culture media. By labelling GO with luminescent
nanoparticles (quantum dots), we studied the GO internalization kinetic
and efficiency. Comparing the “classic” and UT protocols,
we found that the latter allows faster and more efficient internalization
both in macrophages and HeLa cells without affecting cell viability.
We believe that the use of UT protocol will be interesting and suitable
for the preparation of next-generation GO-based drug-delivery platforms.