Cisplatin functionalized single‐walled carbon nanotubes

Abstract

Abstract The use of chemotherapeutic agents is nowadays limited by the damage they inflict to healthy tissues. Due to the fact that Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) possess the characteristic feature of being not degraded in the human body, they can be used to deliver small organic drug molecules into the diseased cells thus preventing normal tissue damages. Here, the functionalization of acid treated Single‐Walled CNTs with Cisplatin (Cis‐Diamminedichloroplatinum (CDDP)), a potent anticancer agent which suffers of toxic side‐effects and lack of selectivity, is presented. Raman Spectroscopy was exploited to estimate the purity of SWNTs sample and via Infrared (IR) analysis the characterization of the functional groups formed upon the acid treatment was performed. The morphology characterization was carried out with high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR‐TEM), and Raman spectroscopy. Additionally, the CDDP release from the samples in physiological solution was studied using UV‐VIS Spectroscopy and Inductively coupled plasma (ICP) analysis. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)