Veronica Clavijo Jordan1, Kevin M. Bennett1
1School of Biological &
Health Systems Engineering,
Nanoparticles have been developed as T2 contrast agents for molecular MRI. However, there is still a need to develop agents with higher relaxivities in order to increase sensitivity to delivered agents in vivo. In this work, we formed a tungsten-iron alloy in the interior cavitiy of apoferritin. The use of the protein to form a crystal core enhances the magnetic properties of the particle. The yield of the process when compared to magnetoferritin was enhanced by 200%. The W-Magnetoferritin nanoparticles had a per-iron and per-particle transverse relaxivity of 27,666mM-1s-1 and 433,651mM-1s-1 respectively, which is a ~10% increase over magnetoferritin nanoparticles.
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