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Updated: May 30, 2026

Polymalic Acid-based Nano Biopolymers for Targeting of Multiple Tumor Markers: An Opportunity for Personalized Medicine?
Published on: June 13, 2014
Herceptin functionalized polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane - conjugated oligomers - silica/iron oxide
1Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117576, Singapore.
Abstract:
Sorting and detection of circulating tumor cells (CTC) in peripheral blood as an efficient and non-invasive method to diagnose cancer have recently attracted much attention. In this article, we developed a multiply-engineered nanoparticle system for CTC sorting and detection, which consists of (1) conjugated oligomer (CO) as fluorescence signal source, (2) polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes (POSS) scaffold for CO localization for better fluorescent effects, (3) silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) as formulation matrix of the POSS containing CO, (4) iron oxide (IO) layer on the silica nanoparticles (IO-SiNPs) for magnetic collection, and (5) herceptin surface functionalization of the IO-SiNPs to target cancer cells of HER2 overexpression. Such a multiply-engineered structure can be used for either traditional immunomagnetic methods or microfluidic devices for CTC sorting and detection.

