Carbon Nanomaterial Tagged Bio Mimicking System for Biomedical Application

Abstract

Biomedical applications employing nanomaterials, typically from carbon sources have tremendous attention owing to the low toxicity issue, biodegradability nature, and easy preparation of such nanomaterials. Since long back, they have been applied in diverse biomedical fields from drug/biomolecule/vaccine delivery to biosensing. Although such systems are made with manifold improvement in their properties and functions, they face limitations that tend researchers to work more by modification of usual moiety to imbibe peculiar characteristics. One such carbon nanomaterial is carbon dots which have fluorescence behaviour leading to significant applications. They have already been applied in our target area and explored to a great extent. However, such nanomaterial-based applications have also come across serious obstacles in direct use in human bodies preventing its desired tasks. Specifically, rejection of cellular entry of nanoparticles, limiting complete and targeted drug delivery are some important concerns for biomedical scientists to deal with. To address such issues, we planned to apply some engineering on the carbon nanomaterials with biomimicking systems like vesicles. Such vesicles are extracted from bacteria and also can be synthesized from lipids, phospholipids, fatty acids, polymer, surfactants etc. Their structures look like our cell membranes phospholipid bilayers and cell organelles which show similar biomedical applications like carbon nanomaterials. Finally, several nanocomposites have been prepared with the two mentioned systems, studied their properties and diverse applications. The whole thesis is a compilation of four such interesting works showing stimuli-responsive drug delivery, toxin removal, and some insight into nano-bio interaction. Firstly, we prepared a nanocomposite system consisting of graphene quantum dot (a carbon nanomaterial) and oleic acid (a fatty acid) vesicles to demonstrate pH-sensitive drug release. Methylene blue was taken as a model drug and observed that the nan