FUNCTIONALIZED MULTI-WALLED CARBON NANOTUBES FOR CHEMOTHERAPY

Abstract

Cancer represents the second mortality leading category of diseases worldwide with challenging treatment modalities; this consolidates the need of quality optimization in the pharmaceutical industry production processes. The essential engineering investigation of nanoparticles mass production provides pharmaceutical engineering solutions of nano-medicine targeted drug delivery systems and optimized personalized medical processes. Nano-medicine is an interdisciplinary research area between engineering, medicine, pharmacy and science that introduces solutions, renovations and innovations for a broad range of applications, including drug delivery and targeting. Several types of nanoparticles show a remarkable potential in this field due to their chemically rich surfaces and manipulation flexibility. Carbon nanotube is one of the most important nanoparticles that are used in nano-medicine generally and targeted drug delivery specifically. Carbon nanotubes introduce a high selective drug delivery system that provides a solution to the chemotherapy un-specificity and major side effects. This thesis focuses on multi-walled carbon nanotubes surface engineering as a drug carrier with a targeting ligand using covalent and non-covalent functionalization and its subsequent cytotoxicity impact on MCF-7 breast cancer cell-line.