CAREER: Harnessing continuous growth mechanism to synthesize water-soluble magnetic nanoparticles for magnetic particle imaging

Non-technical summary:

This CAREER award supported by the Biomaterials program in the Division of Materials Research aims to understand the continuous growth mechanism of water-soluble magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) and harness the growth mechanism to synthesize MNPs for magnetic particles imaging (MPI) application. The project serves the national interest by promoting the progress of science and advancing public health.

The MPI is a promising and novel imaging modality because it can generate positive contrast signals directly from MNPs without using harmful ionizing radiation. The MPI has unlimited tissue penetration depth, low background signals, and high sensitivity. Nevertheless, the MPI is currently not available for clinical applications.

One major obstacle is a lack of MPI-specific MNPs as tracers. High-performance MNPs are critical to materialize the potential of MPI in clinical translation. This project is inspired by Professor Yongfeng Zhao’s pilot study demonstrating that water-soluble MNPs can be synthesized in a continuous growth manner.

The resulting MNPs show high MPI performance. However, the mechanism of the continuous growth is still unknown, and the correlation between water-soluble MNPs and MPI performance is not established. Addressing these questions will accelerate the design, synthesis, and manufacturing of high-performance MNPs for MPI.

The knowledge obtained from this project will stimulate the controlled synthesis of water-soluble MNPs and clear the roadblock for the application of MPI in healthcare. This project will integrate the proposed research activities with education plans to train underrepresented students for advanced degrees. The outreach plan is to disseminate the research findings to the general public during the annual Science Maker event in the Mississippi Museum of National Science.

Technical summary:

The overarching goal of this proposal is to obtain a holistic molecule-level understanding of the continuous growth mechanism of water-soluble magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) in polyols, aimed to enhance magnetic particles imaging (MPI) performance of MNPs. The research project is meaningful because MPI is an emerging tracer imaging modality that can overcome many limitations of existing imaging techniques.

The properties of MNPs dictate their sensitivity and resolution, which are essential for the further application of MPI. To achieve this overarching goal, this project is designed to 1) explore the continuous growth mechanism for controlled synthesis of water-soluble MNPs; 2) unravel a living growth profile of MNPs in polyols; 3) manipulate the reaction parameters for the synthesis of water-soluble MNPs; 4) expand the mechanism to synthesize water-soluble MNPs with dopants; and 5) study the MPI properties of MNPs synthesized in polyols.

This project will accelerate the selection, synthesis, and manufacturing of high-performance MNPs for MPI. The education plan is to integrate this research project with an education initiative that is designed to systematically train minority undergraduate students in the STEM area at Jackson State University (JSU) to obtain advanced degrees. The project will be integrated with a course offered at JSU through the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL).

JSU students will interact with research scientists from BNL and learn state-of-the-art technologies on materials characterization. This research will be presented as part of the “You Be The Chemist” competition and help foster and enhance the passion for STEM among middle school students.

This project is jointly funded by the Biomaterials program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.