by Keyword: physicochemical properties
De Matteis, V, Griego, A, Scarpa, E, Cascione, M, Singh, J, Rizzello, L, (2023). Size Effect of Silver Nanoparticles Derived from Olive Mill Wastewater in THP-1 Cell Lines Applied Sciences-Basel 13, 6033 
The constant demand of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) for different applications requires a new selection of solvents and reagents for their synthesis, to make them less toxic to living organisms and the environment. Among the alternative technologies that can be used to exclude the use of toxic products, green chemistry is based on the employment of biomolecules derived from plants or microorganisms to achieve NPs. Therefore, with the aim of applying the principles of circular economy, the waste deriving from the production of olive oil represents a useful source of polyphenols to be used as reduction agents to obtain AgNPs. In our work, we employed the Olive Mill Wastewater (OMWW), the so-called vegetation water typical of the Mediterranean geographical area, to achieve two sizes of AgNPs, i.e., 50 nm and 30 nm. These NPs were tested on the human monocytic cell line (THP-1) using two concentrations (3 µM and 5 µM) to understand their ability to trigger or not the inflammatory response. This was undertaken following IL-6, IL-8, IL-5 and TNF-α secretion and the NF-kB translocation. We concluded that the AgNPs did not induce strong activation of these pathways, especially when the cells were treated with higher dimensional NPs. Consequently, the application of these NPs in vivo for therapeutic purpose could be significant.
JTD Keywords: agricultural waste, immune response, physicochemical properties, Green synthesis, Silver nanoparticles
RIZZELO, L, DE MATTEIS, V, (2022). Identification of SARS-CoV-2 by Gold Nanoparticles Biocell 46, 2369-2380
The SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks highlighted the need for effective, reliable, fast, easy-to-do and cheap diagnostics procedures. We pragmatically experienced that an early positive-case detection, inevitably coupled with a mass vaccination campaign, is a milestone to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) can indeed play a crucial role in this context, as their physicochemical, optics and electronics properties are being extensively used in photothermal therapy (PTT), radiation therapy (RT), drug delivery and diagnostic. AuNPs can be synthesized by several approaches to obtain different sizes and shapes that can be easily functionalized with many kinds of molecules such as antibodies, proteins, probes, and lipids. In addition, AuNPs showed high biocompatibility making them useful tool in medicine field. We thus reviewed here the most relevant evidence on AuNPs as effective way to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antigens. We trust future diagnostic efforts must take this 'old-fashioned' nanotechnology tool into consideration for the development and commercialization of reliable and feasible detection kits.
JTD Keywords: Aggregation, Antibodies, Assay, Covid-19, Diagnosis, Enhanced raman-scattering, Gold nanoparticles, Immunoassay, Pandemic disease, Physicochemical properties, Rapid detection, Sars-cov-2, Sensors, Surface-plasmon resonance, Therapy