SPIONs magnetic nanoparticles for MRI applications: Microwave synthesis and physicochemical, magnetic and biological characterizations

More and more biomedical applications used nanoparticles to improve their quality and their possibilities. Among the nanoparticles used, Superparamagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles (SPIONs) are often used because these nanoparticles are biocompatible, non-toxic and the ease of synthesizing them. The aim of this study is to obtain highly water-soluble iron oxide nanoparticles using a microwave process. The SPIONs developped with this technique have a diameter between 2 nm and 4 nm range, are monodisperse and stable in an aqueous media. Indeed, with the microwaves, the control of the temperature is more precise and allows so to obtain nanoparticles with a same diameter. After the synthesis, several characterizations are carried out to determine the shape, the size, the chemical composition, the stability and the magnetic properties. Then, these SPIONs can use to control the regeneration of tissues such as cartilage tissue. For that, SPIONs are internlasized in mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) because these cells can to differenciate into all humans cells and allows so to regenerate all tissues: these cells are good candidate for tissue engineering. In this work, the internalization of SPIONs and the cytotocixity are studied and confirm the biocompatibility of our SPIONs. Then, for the control of the regeneration of tissues, relaxometry and MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) of SPIONs are realized to compare with the commercial contrast agent present (Endorem®). For our SPIONs, the values of transverse and longitudinal relaxivities are high and in the same order to Endorem®.