SERRS Study of Molecular Arrangement of Amphotericin B Adsorbed onto Iron Oxide Nanoparticles Precoated with a Bilayer of Lauric Acid

Abstract

Nanosized drug delivery systems (DDS) have been proposed and engineered to achieve reduction of systemic toxic effects of classical drugs while targeting specific biological sites. Despite the human toxic effects, Amphotericin B (AmB) is a potent antifungal drug that has been widely used to treat systemic mycoses. However, the therapeutic efficacy and the toxicity of AmB both depend on the drug molecular organization, which in turn depends on how AmB anchors onto the selected DDS. This work reports on the study of AmB adsorbed onto a DDS comprising magnetite nanoparticles surface-dressed with a bilayer of lauric acid. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), ζ potential, and atomic absorption spectrophotometry were employed to characterize the produced materials. Additionally, Surface-enhanced Resonance Raman Scattering (SERRS), using silver colloids, was employed to probe the surface adsorption of AmB. We found the SERRS effect enhanced the Raman signal of surface-grafted AmB by a...