Functional magnetic ferrogels: From biosensors to regenerative medicine

Abstract

Polyelectrolyte gels and ferrogels (FG) are attracting special interest in biomedicine. Here we describe our experience developing functional magnetic ferrogels for regenerative medicine and magnetoimpedance biosensing for measuring stray fields of nanoparticles in FG with a multilayered sensitive element. We discuss the possibility of developing a new generation of drug delivery systems for magnetic field assisted delivery, positioning and biosensing.

Magnetic Properties of Iron Oxide Nanoparticles Do Not Essentially Contribute to Ferrogel Biocompatibility

“…Iron oxide magnetic particles embedded in composite ferrogels also vary in dimensions, chemical compositions, synthetic routes, and other parameters. In general, results obtained in these studies confirm good biocompatibility of ferrogels, and the achieved level of magnetic properties of these materials makes them especially attractive for magnetic field-assisted drug delivery and magnetic biosensing [5,51]. The present combination of the composites based on superparamagnetic and diamagnetic nanoparticles can be of special interest in the understanding of a high-frequency response of polymer matrix with variations of dielectric constants contributions in the formation of magnetoimpedance responses of the gel-based composites [51].…”

“…Maghemite superparamagnetic (γ-Fe 2 O 3 ) and alumina (Al 2 O 3 ) diamagnetic nanoparticles, denoted as MNPs (maghemite) and ANPs (alumina), were accordingly synthesized by means of laser target evaporation (LTE) method. The main details of the fabrication technology and the apparatus of LTE were described in detail in our previous reports [5,11,13]. As a source of laser irradiation for iron oxide rotating target evaporation, we used a Ytterbium (Yb) fiber laser at a 1.07 µm wavelength.…”

“…In the past several decades, a number of biologically inert materials were introduced as useful composites for cell culturing for the needs of tissue engineering [1,2]. Among others, magnetic soft materials such as ferrogels (FG) have demonstrated promising applications in biomedicine due to the ability to change their physical properties in response to an external magnetic field [3,4] or to be used as the components of the addressed delivery by the gradient external magnetic field both the encapsulated drugs and soft implants [5]. Furthermore, a magnetic field per se may stimulate the biological activity of certain types of cells [6,7] by the enhancement of cell adhesion, proliferation, differentiation as far as modifying properties of the fluids used for cell cultivation [8][9][10].…”

“…In particular, the addition of magnetic nanoparticles to the network of PAAm gel significantly changes the electrical and mechanical properties of FG that strongly control the cell adhesion and proliferation on the ferrogel substrate [13][14][15]. The arrangement of MNPs in ferrogel structure is also a potential source of stray magnetic fields [5,16]. This feature, could hypothetically influence biological cell activity as well.…”

“…This feature, could hypothetically influence biological cell activity as well. At a time, the existence of stray magnetic fields of the gel-based composites can be used for the definition of implant position or degradation state using magnetic field sensors [5,16].…”