Completed notes of the course Part 1

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NANOMEDICINE LEZIONE 1 – 25-02-19 ESAME à L’esame è orale, 30 minuti. È flessibile con l’orario e la data dell’esame, ci sono comunque due date ufficiali. Quindi ci si può mettere d’accordo almeno due settimane prima per una data alternativa. LIBRO à Non c’è un libro di testo, perché questo campo è relativamente nuovo, quindi il materiale disponibile è un po’ sparso in giro. MATERIALE à Alla fine di ogni pacchetto di slide ci sono links a reviews e materiale online. DEFINITION OF NANOMEDICINE Nanotechnology + medicine: it’s nanotechnology applied to medicine, to cure or detect certain diseases. It’s a very multidisciplinary field, so from a physical point of view nanomaterials are intriguing when they are nano. It’s important the fact of how small the materials must be to be considered “nanomaterials”. If we go very small in size, about 50nm, the physical properties of this material change a lot. Quantum dots are materials, semiconductors, and when we go smaller and smaller they become fluorescent, so we can use them for the detection of some cellular activity. Microenvironment: 1um-1mm, for bacteria, yeasts, cells Nanoenvironment: vescicles, proteins, viruses Anything smaller than cells (1um), can have a nanoeffect, so they have their own properties and we should study their particular properties. APPLICATIONS - Diagnostics à accumulating into the target, they could provide certain information about a certain body behaviour. - Drug delivery à injecting nanoparticles into a bloodstream, by circulating into it and the particles reach a certain point, a target organ and accumulate there, delivering a drug to treat a disease. - Gene delivery à chemotherapeutic? Not only, we can deliver also DNA or RNA, to provide new genetic information to cells, to kill them and other…