Browsing by Subject "Nanosphere"
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Item Open Access Cellular internalization of therapeutic oligonucleotides by peptide amphiphile nanofibers and nanospheres(American Chemical Society, 2016-04) Mumcuoglu, D.; S. Ekiz, M.; Gunay, G.; Tekinay, T.; Tekinay, A. B.; Güler, Mustafa O.Oligonucleotides are promising drug candidates due to the exceptionally high specificity they exhibit toward their target DNA and RNA sequences. However, their poor pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties, in conjunction with problems associated with their internalization by cells, necessitates their delivery through specialized carrier systems for efficient therapy. Here, we investigate the effects of carrier morphology on the cellular internalization mechanisms of oligonucleotides by using self-assembled fibrous or spherical peptide nanostructures. Size and geometry were both found to be important parameters for the oligonucleotide internalization process; direct penetration was determined to be the major mechanism for the internalization of nanosphere carriers, whereas nanofibers were internalized by clathrin- and dynamin-dependent endocytosis pathways. We further showed that glucose conjugation to carrier nanosystems improved cellular internalization in cancer cells due to the enhanced glucose metabolism associated with oncogenesis, and the internalization of the glucose-conjugated peptide/oligonucleotide complexes was found to be dependent on glucose transporters present on the surface of the cell membrane.Item Open Access Influence of gold-silica nanoparticles on the performance of small-molecule bulk heterojunction solar cells(Elsevier BV * North-Holland, 2015) Xu, X.; Kyaw, A. K. K.; Peng, B.; Xiong, Q.; Demir, Hilmi Volkan; Wang Y.; Wong, T. K. S.; Sun, X. W.Light trapping by gold (Au)-silica nanospheres and nanorods embedded in the active layer of small-molecule (SM) organic solar cell has been systematically compared. Nanorod significantly outperforms nanosphere because of more light scattering and higher quality factor for localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) triggered by nanorods. The optimum concentration of nanorod was characterized by charge carrier transport and morphology of the active layers. At optimum nanorod concentration, almost no change in the morphology of the active layer reveals that LSPR and scattering effects rather than the morphology are mainly responsible for the enhanced power conversion efficiency. In addition, the preliminary lifetime studies of the SM solar cells with and without Au-silica nanorods were conducted by measuring the current density-voltage characteristics over 20 days. The results show that plasmonic device with nanorods has no adverse impact on the device stability