With the development of modern industries, heavy metal pollution in humans is on the rise, say researchers in China, who have now designed a supermagnetic nanocomposite to effectively remove one of the pollutants – cadmium ions – from blood.
The nanocomposite binds to cadmium ions in the blood and a magnet is used to attract the resulting complex for removal
Cadmium ions damage organs and are carcinogenic. Materials currently being studied to clear them from human blood don’t possess all the required properties for this purpose.
They either have good selectivity, high saturation magnetisation or good water dispersibility, but not all three. The new composite, made by Jun Jin and Jiantai Ma from Lanzhou University and colleagues, combines all of these properties.
The team built up the nanocomposite – PAD-PEG-Fe3O4@PEI – from four components. The first was magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles, chosen for their low toxicity. The team coated them with polyethylenimine (PEI), which binds to cadmium ions. The coating also reduces the chances of nanoparticle uptake by red blood cells, maximising their circulation time in the blood. Polyethylene glycol (PEG) was grafted onto this as an anchor for negatively charged 2,2′-(phenylazanediyl) diacetic acid (PAD), which counteracts interactions between the nanoparticles and plasma proteins or white blood cells.
Interested to know more? Read the full article in Chemistry World here…
Read the paper from Nanoscale:
2, 2′-(phenylazanediyl) diacetic acid modified Fe3O4@PEI for selective removal of cadmium ions from blood
Jun Jin, Fang Yang, Fengwei Zhang, Wuquan Hu, Shao-bo Sun and Jiantai Ma
Nanoscale, 2012, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C2NR11481J
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