Supramolecular Nanoparticles NPH partner scientist H.-R. Tseng and co-workers developed a convenient, flexible and modular synthetic approach for preparation of size-controllable supramolecular nanoparticles (SNPs) from different organic molecular building blocks. A collection of SNPs with variable sizes ranging from 30 to 450 nm can be prepared by simply mixing their molecular building blocks at different ratios, and the resulting SNPs exhibit good stability under physiological conditions. Such a supramolecular approach is currently investigated towards the applications including a diversity of multifunctional SNPs from other molecular building blocks and/or loads, e.g., radioactive tags, organic motifs, metal clusters, DNA/peptide/protein aggregates, drugs, and water-soluble oligomers/polymers.

The resulting SNPs with different loads have been utilized for applications in positron emission tomography (PET) imaging, gene delivery, gene/protein co-delivery, targeted drug delivery, photothermal treatment of cancer cells and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) imaging.

It is conceivable that this supramolecular nanoparticle platform technology will enable the creation of a combinatorial SNP library by manipulating synthetic variables, including mixing ratios among the molecular building blocks, SNP sizes, surface ligand coverage, surface charge densities and amount of loading capacities that could enhance the performance of the multifunctional SNPs

Selected Publications

1.      Jung, J. J.; Solanki, A.; Memoli, K. A.; Kamei, K.; Kim, H.; Drahl, M. A.; Williams, L. J.; Tseng, H. R.; Lee, K., Selective Inhibition of Human Brain Tumor Cells through Multifunctional Quantum-Dot-Based siRNA Delivery. Angewandte Chemie-International Edition 2010, 49 (1), 103-107.

2.      Wang, H.; Wang, S. T.; Su, H.; Chen, K. J.; Armijo, A. L.; Lin, W. Y.; Wang, Y. J.; Sun, J.; Kamei, K.; Czernin, J.; Radu, C. G.; Tseng, H. R., A Supramolecular Approach for Preparation of Size-Controlled Nanoparticles. Angewandte Chemie-International Edition 2009, 48 (24), 4344-4348.