Ricerc@Sapienza

In recent years, novel nanofabrication approaches have attracted the growing interest of researchers in the biomedical field. Nanomaterials are highly versatile tools that can interact with cells in general, including bacteria, animal and plant cells. When used as drug carriers, NPs can afford improved circulation and biodistribution, in addition to high drug loading and controlled release rates, as well as protection from degradation that may occur both in vitro and in vivo.

Graphene oxide (GO) is employed in a broad range of biomedical applications including antimicrobial therapies, scaffolds for tissue engineering, and drug delivery, among others. However, the inability to load it efficiently with double-stranded DNA impairs its use as a gene delivery system. To overcome this limitation, in this work, the functionalization of GO with cationic lipids (CL) is proficiently accomplished by microfluidic manufacturing.