UC San Diego

Nanobowls is a modified structure of nanoparticles that holds drug inside for therapeutics and diagnosis. However, drug delivery in nanocarriers have a lot of limitations that effect its efficiency due to location of the diseases and ability of controlling the nanocarriers. A potential solution is to make the nanocarriers magnetic to be able to guide them to the targeted region where the drug is going to be released. For this, we designed a stable nanobowls made from Silica (SiO2) that can encapsulate the drug inside a cavity. The nanobowls were magnetized using iron oxide to enable responsivity to a magnetic field. A scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images was captured to confirm the structure of the magnetized nanobowls and dynamic light scattering (DLS) to test aggregation. A mathematical analysis was performed on the flow and the magnetized nanobowls for a force balance between magnetic force and drag force. Guiding efficiency was examined in vitro using a Y shape microfluidic chip system has square cross section area and width of 200µm. A N42 magnet with a surface field of 0.42 T in and a pulling force of 27.83 lbs was used to guide the magnetic nanobowls. An absorption test was performed on the nanobowls passed through the microfluidic chip system and the concentration was found. As expected, the concentration of the nanobowls decreases in more viscous solvents and with increasing the flow rate and distance from the nanobowls. Further work is required to use multiple magnets to increase responsibility.