P-336 - Enhanced antioxidants activity of antioxidants through surface self-assembly approach

Abstract

The pharmaceutical application of antioxidants was severely limited by their poor bioavailability and low biocompatibility. To solve this problem, recent advances on the nanotechnology and nanomaterials provide an alternative method, by which the antioxidants can be encapsulated or covalently linked with nanomaterial to form nanoantioxidants. In 2007, the first example of antioxidant-functioanlized gold nanoparticle was synthesized by self-assembly of antioxidants on the gold nanoparticle in our lab. The results showed that the antioxidants activity was significantly enhanced than that of antioxidant monomer. After that, similar results were found when using salvianic acid A as the functional group. The mechanism for the enhanced antioxidant activity could be attributed to the it-it stacking interactions between and among adjacent groups on the surface of nanoparticles. On the other hand, we also prepared 20–50 nm hydroxyethyl-chitosan nanoparticles as a non-cytotoxic carrier for antioxidant and evaluated its in vitro and in vivo antioxidant activity. The results showed that the antioxidants activity could be also enhanced when the antioxidants were encapsulated into nanocarriers through a non-covalent approach.