Study of Insulin Attached onto Magnetic Nanoparticles
Date
2018-09-24
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
0000-0002-3694-6717
Type
Thesis
Degree Level
Masters
Abstract
Glucose regulation is compromised in diabetic patients and hence diabetes is characterized by accumulation of glucose in blood. As a standard practice diabetic patients usually self-administer subcutaneous insulin injections daily, which are usually associated with pain, tissue necrosis, microbial contamination and nerve damage to local areas. Glucose-responsive implantable devices have provided a hope for a brighter future of diabetes management. However, one of the limitations of such devices is their refill requirement, which often requires surgical procedures leading to lower patient compliance. To overcome this limitation led to the idea of reusing insulin after it has been in the body circulation system and later becomes residues. To make this idea work, the first step proposed in this thesis is to tag insulin with magnetic nanoparticles and then to use a magnetic guidance system to bring it back the residue insulin to the implanted device before it can go to the clearance sites. Obviously, the precondition for the foregoing idea to work is to make sure that insulin’s conformation is not affected by the attachment with magnetic nanoparticles. This thesis was designed to study this precondition. The hypothesis is that the insulin’s conformation will not be affected by the attachment with the magnetic nanoparticles. Two specific objectives are: (1) assessment of the feasibility of potential capturing techniques and analysis of the attachment of insulin onto the magnetic nanoparticles to confirm the attachment; (2) measurement of the insulin’s conformation before and after it is attached with the magnetic nanoparticles. The spectroscopy techniques, including Fourier transform infrared, circular dichroism, absorbance and fluorescence spectroscopy, were used to conduct data collection and analysis. All four of these spectroscopies provide important information concerning the research objectives of this thesis. The results from the fluorescence and absorbance spectroscopy confirm the attachment of insulin onto the magnetic nanoparticles, hence the achievement of Objective 1. The results from the CD and FTIR spectroscopy show that insulin’s conformation is unchanged before and after its attachment onto magnetic nanoparticles, hence the achievement of Objective 2. The general conclusion of the study is that the insulin’s conformation will not be affected by the attachment of it with magnetic nanoparticles.
Description
Keywords
Insulin, Magnetic Nanoparticles, Nanomedicine in diabetes
Citation
Degree
Master of Science (M.Sc.)
Department
Biomedical Engineering
Program
Biomedical Engineering