Juthi Pal,
PMRF fellow

 

(i) Smart nanoparticles using tailor-made polymers: From synthesis to biomedical applications  

 

Nanostructures prepared from amphiphilic copolymers have numerous application in the field of biology and medicine. An amphiphilic copolymer, bearing stimuli-responsive segments are capable of forming interesting nanostructures in aqueous medium and can also undergo structural transformation and self-immolation in response to small variations of stimuli.

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Our current goal is to synthesize different polymeric nanostructures for the purpose of drug delivery. These nanostructures will demonstrate high stability in extracellular environment and will have the ability to target cancer cells via active or passive manner, thus will act as potent drug carriers. Upon reaching their target site, the payload will be released in response to the external / internal stimuli, such as temperature, pH and redox agent etc. 

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(i) I have worked on a project where I have synthesized a dual responsive (pH and redox) copolymer and studied it's self-assembly behavior under physiological condition and in cancer cell environment. We loaded an anticancer drug Doxorubicin in the nanoparticles via stimuli responsive covalent bond and studied the drug loading and release accordingly. We also performed the in situ synthesis of gold nanoparticles using DOX loaded polymers and monitored the drug release in real-time by NSET.

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I have also worked on the synthesis of dual temperature responsive copolymers which can specifically be used for mild hyperthermia induced drug release.

 

Side by side I am also working on stimuli responsive size tunable nanoparticles to achieve enhanced penetration in solid tumors.

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(ii) Stimuli-responsive copolymers can also be used to prepare polymer stabilized metal nanoparticles, which can serve as excellent catalysts in different important organic reactions. These polymer coated nanoparticles can act as phase transfer catalyst in case of heterogenous catalysis and can be recovered easily using the stimuli responsive property of the polymer.

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I have worked with temperature responsive block copolymer stabilized gold nanoparticles where we studied the effect of the capping agent and the shape of the GNPs on the catalytic efficiency, using the reduction of 4-Nitrophenol (4-NP) into 4-Aminophenol (4-AP) as the model reaction. I have also worked with polymer stabilized magnetic nanoparticles, which can be used as green catalyst for styrene oxidation in aqueous media.

Currently I am also working with temperature responsive polymer stabilized palladium nanoparticles for catalysis of Suzuki coupling reaction, which is still at an early stage.

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