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Past Events
Public Seminar of RPg Student:
Novel Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles with Tunable Size and Pore Structure as pH-sensitive Drug Delivery Vehicle for Cancer Therapy
| Speaker: | Ms. Xiaoqing HU |
| Affiliation: | The University of Hong Kong |
| Date: | October 13, 2017 (Friday) |
| Time: | 2:00 p.m. |
| Venue: | Rm 522, 5/F, Chong Yuet Ming Physics Building, HKU |
Abstract
A routine approach for cancer therapy in clinics is using chemotherapeutic agents including cisplatin, doxorubicin, camptothecin, amsacrine, etoposide, and teniposide. However, these chemotherapeutic agents have notorious side effects to humans and only limited effectiveness in killing carcinomatous cells. Curcumin, a relatively nontoxic natural product isolated from curcuma longa, has been widely used as a spice and coloring agent in food. It possesses potent anti-oxidative, anti-inflammatory and anti-tumor promoting activities. So far, curcumin has not yet been approved as a therapeutic agent on account of its low bioavailability, which is probably related to its extremely low aqueous solubility at acidic and neutral microenvironment. In this seminar, how to synthesize monodisperse mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN) with tunable size and pore structure in a facile way and in large scale will be discussed. Besides, how to conjugate MSN with curcumin to form an efficient pH-sensitive system which shows no cytotoxicity to normal cells after release of curcumin will also be discussed.
Anyone interested is welcome to attend.