Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) is a versatile technique that can quantitatively image and manipulate surfaces by probing them with a very sharp tip. Because of this, close to any system from the atomic to the microscale can be studied with many applications being in biophysics1. In pharmaceutical research, however, AFM is often limited to qualitative imaging as a supplement to bulk techniques2.
In this talk, I will present my work so far in using relatively simple topographical imaging of pharmaceutical nanoparticles on a substrate with my focus being on protamine-microRNA nanoparticles (also known as proticles)3. We have found that the results are highly dependent upon which substrate is chosen as only some end up showing proticle-like structures. Furthermore, we have been able to image particle-particle interactions as well as image the effect of different preparation methods with the potential being that AFM results can be correlated to pharmaceutical functionality.
References:
1 Dufrêne, Y. F., Ando, T., Garcia, R., Alsteens, D., Martinez-Martin, D., Engel, A., ... & Müller, D. J. (2017). Imaging modes of atomic force microscopy for application in molecular and cell biology. Nature nanotechnology, 12(4), 295-307.
2 Sitterberg, J., Özcetin, A., Ehrhardt, C., & Bakowsky, U. (2010). Utilising atomic force microscopy for the characterisation of nanoscale drug delivery systems. European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics, 74(1), 2-13.
3 Junghans, M., Kreuter, J., & Zimmer, A. (2000). Antisense delivery using protamine– oligonucleotide particles. Nucleic Acids Research, 28(10), e45-e45
This work is funded by the Doc Academy NanoGraz of the University of Graz.
Monday 17:00 – 18:00, HS 05.01
or via unimeet: https://unimeet.uni-graz.at/b/pus-exy-jx7