RSC Advances Blog

Scientists from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing, China) led by Kebin Zhou investigated the interaction between nanorods of Ce(OH)₃ and CeO₂ and the redox protein hemoglobin.

The nano-bio interfaces, such as those between inorganic nanomaterials and biological systems, are gaining a significant amount of interest due to their importance in biomedical applications, but also out of concerns over the bio-safety of nano-engineered particles.  In the case of ceria-based nanomaterials, some studies have found they were able to prevent the increase of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in vitro and in vivo due to the existence of Ce³⁺.  However, others have found that some of these materials could actually generate ROS and cause toxicity to cells as Ce⁴⁺ is reduced to Ce³⁺.

In this work, Zhou and co-workers hydrothermally prepared Ce(OH)₃ and CeO₂ nanorods and studied their interaction with a typical redox protein hemoglobin through an electrochemical method combined with Electron Paramagnetic Resonance spectroscopy.  Ce(OH)₃ was found to be more efficient in enhancing the direct electron-transfer of hemoglobin which may be due to the strong electron-conjugation interaction.

Read the full article for free until the 7th May 2013.

Strong electron-conjugation interaction facilitates electron transfer of hemoglobin by Ce(OH)₃nanorods, Lei Wang, Qingfen Luan, Dan Yang, Xin Yao and Kebin Zhou, RSC Adv., 2013, DOI: 10.1039/C3RA40336J