Interactions of carbon nanostructures with lipid membranes: A nano-bio interface

Carbon nanotubes (CNT) are considered alternative materials for the design of advanced drug and gene delivery vectors, biosensors, disease detection systems, cancer therapy agents, and imaging labels (Bianco et al. 2005). These nanodevices are manufactured at molecular level, improving the pharmacological profile and therapeutic properties of small molecular drugs and conventional detection systems. The ability of CNT to translocate cell membranes and their potentially high loading capacity made them effective transporters for shuttling and delivering peptides, proteins, nucleic acids, and molecular drugs into living cells (Prato et al. 2008). Likewise, the surface properties of CNT, namely, hydrophobicity, π-π staking, 118and surface topology from structural to atomic level, can be designed specifically to reach the desired advanced functionality (Micoli et al. 2013). Unfortunately, very little is known about the interactions that guide the internalization of CNT into cells, and consequently, the translocation mechanisms remain unclear. © 2017 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

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