“Superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPION) have become important for various in vivo and in vitro biomedical applications such as imaging, magnetic separation, biosensor devices and therapy” said Dr. Lionel Maurizi, researcher from Powder Technology Laboratory, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland during his talk on “Methods to characterize iron oxide nanoparticles (SPION) based nano‑hybrids” at NANOTEC.

Dr. Lionel went on to inform that the surface covering, cell internalization, toxicity, biodistribution and clearance of these particles are very important to measure in order to assess their biological behaviors. However, most widely used methods are chemical methods consisting in the dissolution of SPION before use and analysis. These techniques are already well known in biomedical field but could lead to miss-interpretations of results.

Dr. Lionel has just completed his 20 days research visit with NANOTEC’s Nano-Molecular Target Discovery Lab.