Preventing corona effects: multiphosphonic acid poly(ethylene glycol) copolymers for stable stealth iron oxide nanoparticles.

When dispersed in biological fluids, engineered nanoparticles are selectively coated with proteins, resulting in the formation of a protein corona. It is suggested that the protein corona is critical in regulating the conditions of entry into the cytoplasm of living cells. Recent reports describe this phenomenon as ubiquitous and independent of the nature of the particle. For nanomedicine applications, however, there is a need to design advanced and cost-effective coatings that are resistant to protein adsorption and that increase the biodistribution in vivo. In this study, phosphonic acid poly(ethylene glycol) copolymers were synthesized and used to coat iron oxide particles. The copolymer composition was optimized to provide simple and scalable protocols as well as long-term stability in culture media. It is shown that polymers with multiple phosphonic acid functionalities and PEG chains outperform other types of coating, including ligands, polyelectrolytes, and carboxylic acid functionalized PEG. PEGylated particles exhibit moreover exceptional low cellular uptake, of the order of 100 femtograms of iron per cell. The present approach demonstrates that the surface chemistry of engineered particles is a key parameter in the interactions with cells. It also opens up new avenues for the efficient functionalization of inorganic surfaces.

Removal of metal ions from aqueous effluents involving new thermosensitive polymeric sorbent.

In this work, new thermosensitive copolymers bearing phosphonated groups were synthesized and used to remove metal pollution. Sorption properties are brought by hydrolyzed (dimethoxyphosphoryl)methyl 2-methylacrylate (hMAPC1) monomer. N-n-propylacrylamide (NnPAAm) led to the thermoresponsive properties of the copolymers. Low lower critical solution temperature (LCST) values were observed, ranging between 20 and 25 °C depending on the molar ratio of each monomer in the copolymer. Sorption properties of these copolymers towards nickel ions were evaluated for increasing temperatures (10-40 °C), Ni ion concentrations of 20 mg L(-1) and pH values between 3 and 7. Best results were observed for temperatures just lower than the LCST (20 °C), when the copolymer was fully soluble in water solution. For temperature higher than the LCST, phosphonic diacid groups accessibility was considerably reduced by the precipitation of the thermosensitive part of the copolymer leading to lower sorption properties. In these conditions, the highest Ni removal by the copolymer was observed for pH = 7, when there was almost no competition between the sorption of H(+) and Ni(2+) ions on the phosphonic acid groups. These optimal conditions enabled removal of about 70% of the nickel in the synthetic effluent.