Introduction
With the continuous improvement of people's awareness of life and health, the study of drug detection and drug delivery system have become a research upsurge. QDs are having good potential in drug delivery as these may deliver the drug to target site due to lower size and could simultaneously produce photoluminescence due to their surface conductivity.
Figure 1. Schematic diagram of drug delivery
Drug Delivery Pathways
QDs have been widely used in drug delivery, due to their longer blood circulation time, provide huge drug loading capacity, controllable delivery characteristics and various targeting ligands on the surface. The different drug delivery pathways involved in QDs are as follows:
QDs can cross blood-brain barrier (BBB) without any ligand attachment as proved in study that described that saccharide based QDs have an amphiphilic group.[1] Therefore, it can be a very promising approach for the treatment of brain-related diseases. In addition, QDs can also help old people to prevent Parkinson's disease as it inhibits the fibrillation of α-synuclein and directly binds with mature fibrils, trigging their disaggregation.
Figure 2. Brain targeting of QDs
Hunt et al.[2] developed H-oleic acid radio-labeled QDs of metformin for rapid oral administration in vitro and in vivo and targeted delivery to liver cells. Formaldehydetreated serum albumin (FSA), gelatin, and heparin coatings were across the small intestine and found to deliver 60% of the dose within 30 min.
- Nucleic Acid Drug Delivery
The targeting of nucleic acid drug delivery has become a new approach for the treatment of different diseases including cancer. In a reported work,[3] QDs conjugated with small interfering RNA (siRNA) were used to target genes by overcoming cellular bilayer and delivered QD-siRNA into cells due to QDs possess some active binding sites to deliver drugs.
What Can Alfa Chemistry Do？
Alfa Chemistry's technical R&D team has focused on the preparation and application of quantum dots for many years, which has established long-term cooperative relationships with many well-known enterprises and research institutions. We have conducted research on various problems encountered by drug delivery, which can select the appropriate solution according to the customer's experimental purpose. The drug delivery technologies we provide are as follows:
- We can provide drug delivery models to study the drug delivery.
- We can provide pharmacological testing of drugs.
- We can provide a variety of drug analysis and testing services.
References
- Lai C.-Y.; et al. A mesoporous silica nanosphere-based carrier system with chemically removable CdS nanoparticle caps for stimuliresponsive controlled release of neurotransmitters and drug molecules. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2003, 125(15): 4451-4459.
- Hunt N. J.; et al. Rapid intestinal uptake and targeted delivery to the liver endothelium using orally administered silver sulfide quantum dots. ACS Nano, 2020, 14(2): 1492-1507.
- Freeman R.; et al. Nucleic Acid/Quantum Dots (QDs) Hybrid Systems for Optical and Photoelectrochemical Sensing. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 2013, 5(8): 2815-2834.
