Authors:

Benjamin Ameku

Date Created:

Not specified

Course Title:

Professor:

Not specified

About Paper:

Atherosclerosis is the buildup of plaques in the arteries, with the potential to lead to peripheral artery disease, heart attack, and/or heart failure. Discovering vulnerable plaques is crucial to patient prognosis and planning, as rupture could occur. Radiopharmaceuticals play a unique role in patient care, utilizing a radiolabeled molecule to image, diagnose, and/or treat disease. This project involves characterizing the dendrimeric agents targeting CD206, the mannose receptor, that is upregulated in atherosclerotic plaques. In a previous study, the nanoparticle-based radiopharmaceutical showed increased contrast compared to the clinical standard, DOTAREM, but had increased uptake in the kidney. In contrast, after capping the free amine groups on the PAMAM dendrimer with acetate, the molecule shows decreased kidney and adrenal gland uptake while maintaining contrast. This project quantifies this observation by finding the synthesized molecule's hydrodynamic size and zeta potential using dynamic light scattering (DLS) and electrophoretic light scattering (ELS), respectively. The results show that with increased functionality, there is a decrease in hydrodynamic size due to the decrease in available free amine groups on the nanoparticle, as indicated by the zeta potential. This characterizes the behavior of each molecule and is consistent with decreased uptake in organs like the kidneys and adrenal glands. This will help future research as it shows how capping the free amine groups in PAMAM dendrimers changed hydrodynamic size and surface charge, and its associated decrease in off target uptake.

Source:

Illinois Institute of Technology

Topics:

No topics listed

Co-authors:

Benjamin Ameku