Abstract
We reported a systematic study of functional nanoparticle – microsphere construct for cancer treatment. The research had two section, one is controlled synthesis of colloidal gold nano-gyroids, the other one is computer modeling of controlled microsphere release. We reported a systematic study of synthesis and characterize of gold nano-gyroid colloid. A nanoporous polymer(polystyrene-b-poly(L-lactide) block copolymer thin film, followed by the hydrolysis of the poly(L-lactide) blocks) with gyroid nanochannels was used as a template for Au nano-gyroid. A new oil-in-water emulsion-based approach was developed for the preparation of Au nano-gyroid in the form of colloid. Dichloromethane was used as the organic solvent (oil) for the purpose of polystyrene dissolution, and thiolated polyethylene glycol was employed as a surfactant to stabilize the oil-in-water emulsion and also the Au nano-gyroid in the water phase. Particle size and morphology of Au nano-gyroid were characterized by temperature-programmed electrospray-differential mobility analysis. The result shows that both the mobility size and volume of Au nano-gyroid increased with the deposition time of Au. In contrast, the mobility size and volume of Au nano-gyroid decreased with the concentration of nuclei. The shape factor of Au nano-gyroid was found to be independent on the concentration of nuclei and growth time (≈1.30±0.11), indicating the isotropic growth of Au nano-gyroid. This work describes a prototype methodology to fabricate and characterize morphology-controlled metal nanoparticle with a high colloidal stability. In this study, we also developed the computational fluid dynamic simulation model for microsphere-based drug delivery. The results show the material properties of microsphere (density, size, friction constant), fluid properties (viscosity, flow velocity), and dimension of blood vessel (diameter, length, branch) were critical to the efficacy in delivery of microsphere in the blood stream. By throttling the gastroduodenal artery(GDA), the calculated efficiency improved presumably due to the reduction of “dead zone” in the flow field. The calculated result model experiment was conducted showed a reasonable agreement with the experimental data. The prototype study proposed here provide a useful strategy for Au nanoparticles – microsphere construct in biomedical application.