Lab talk
Feb 14, 2008
Radiolabelling for biodistribution study of carbon nanotubes
Carbon nanotube (CNT) mediated drug-delivery systems have currently aroused a lot of interest. It is essential to gain a better understanding of CNT behavior in animals for developing CNT-based drug-delivery systems. Biodistribution is an important element for the study of the pharmacokinetics and the related biological behaviors. However, due to the difficulty of detecting the extremly small amount of CNTs in animals, getting their basic biodistribution information is a real challenge.
To address this challenge, a fast and convenient CNT tracing method is required. A research group at Peking University, under the direction of Professor Yuanfang Liu and Professor Haifang Wang, developed a convenient and general method to trace the pathway of CNTs in animals by labelling radioisotope iodine onto carbon nanotubes. Two kinds of CNT samples were used to examine the reliability of the method. This radioiodine tracing method can be effectively applied to different CNT derivatives to determine their in vivo biodistribution within one day. Such basic study will benefit the fulfillment of CNT-based drug-delivery.
Future work will focus on studying the biological behavior of various carbon nanomaterials that is vital for future bioapplications and safety evaluation of carbon nanomaterials. Furthermore, this study will be extended to the development of the in vivo CNT-mediated drug-delivery system.
About the author
Haifang Wang is an associate professor of the College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering at Peking University, Beijing, China. She is currently conducting research on the biological behavior of nanomaterials. Yuanfang Liu is a professor of the College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering at Peking University. His current research interests are the bioapplications and nanotoxicity of nanomaterials. This article is co-authored by Xiaoyong Deng, who got his MSc degree from the College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering at Peking University and is now working at the Institute of Nanochemistry and Nanobiology of Shanghai University. Shengtao Yang and Haiyu Nie are PhD candidates of the College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering at Peking University, who are continuing the study of chemical functionalization and biological behavior of CNTs.
