Inductive heating of native and core/shell superparamagentic magnetite nanoparticles

There are many diseases where specific killing of a particular cell type (cancer, virus infected, auto-reactive) is necessary to control the disease.  Current pharmaceutical approaches generally rely on specific chemical agents which often have serious side effects which limit the utility of these agents. These effects include toxicity to host cells and development of resistance by target cells or organisms. These secondary effects severely limit the use of the drugs whether they are cytotoxic anticancer agents, antibiotics, or antiviral agents. We are investigating the use of antibody conjugated, inductively heated magnetite nanoparticles to kill targeted cells. The efficacy of the particles depends on the amount of heat generated per particle.  Here we propose to compare the methodology of nanoparticle syntheses as it relates to atomic lattice structure and to inductive heating capacity of the particles. If successful, the gold coated, super-paramagnetic magnetite core/shell nano-particles could be used to treat diseases and avoid side effects to the host as well as limiting cell, bacterial, or viral resistance commonly seen with conventional antitumor agents and antibiotics.