Application of iron oxide anoparticles in neuronal tissue engineering.

Abstract

Since the introduction of nanotechnology, nanoscale materials have developed rapidly and have been applied in various fields including in the pharmaceutical industry, medicine, and tissue engineering. Among a variety of nanomaterials, magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) have been intensively investigated for numerous in vivo applications such as gene and drug delivery, diagnostics, cell labeling and sorting. Compared to nanoparticles made from other materials, IONPs have several additional unique applications due to their magnetic properties, for example, magnetic cell separation, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and X-ray contrast agents, tumor hyperthermia, and in the targeting of bioactive agents immobilized on magnetic materials with the presence of an external magnetic field (Gupta and Gupta, 2005). IONPs are considered biocompatible and biodegradable (reviewed by Wang et al. (2009)). Indeed, some IONPs preparations have been approved for clinical applications by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and/or the European Commission (EC) and are commercially available, such as Lumirem (as a contrast agent for MRI for the gastrointestinal tract) and Feraheme (for the treatment of iron deficiency anemia) (Cortajarena et al., 2014).