| The realm of nanomedicine has grown exponentially over the past few decades. However, there are several obstacles that need to be overcome, prior to the wide-spread clinical applications of these nanoparticles, such as (i) developing well-defined nanoparticles of varying size, morphology and composition to enable various clinical applications; (ii) overcome various physiological barriers encountered in order to deliver the therapeutics to the target location; and (iii) real-time monitoring of the nano-therapeutics within the human body for tracking their uptake, localization and effect. Hence, this dissertation focuses on developing multimodal nanotechnology-based approaches to overcome the above-mentioned challenges and thus enable regulation of cancer and stem cell fate.;The initial part of this dissertation describes the development of multimodal magnetic core-shell nanoparticles (MCNPs), comprised of a highly magnetic core surrounded by a thin gold shell, thus combining magnetic and plasmonic properties. These nanoparticles were utilized for mainly two applications: (i) Magnetically-facilitated delivery of siRNA and plasmid DNA for effective stem cell differentiation and imaging and (ii) Combined hyperthermia and targeted delivery of a mitochondria-targeting peptide for enhancing apoptosis in cancer cells. The following part of this dissertation presents the generation of a multi-functional cyclodextrin-conjugated polymeric delivery platform (known as DexAMs), for co-delivery of anticancer drugs and siRNAs in a target-specific manner to brain tumor cells. This combined delivery of chemotherapeutics and siRNA resulted in a synergistic effect on the apoptosis of brain tumor cells, as compared to the individual treatments. The final part of this thesis presents development of stimuli-responsive uorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based mesoporous silica nanoparticles for real-time monitoring of drug release in cells. The stimuli-responsive behavior of these nanoparticles resulted in change in the FRET signal, thus allowing for real time monitoring of drug release.;Taken together, these nanomaterial-based approaches combine therapeutic and imaging modalities within a single nanoplatform and as a result have the potential for regulating cancer and stem cell fate such as proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis as well as allowing for real-time monitoring of these events in a non-invasive manner. |
