THERAPEUTIC NANOPRODUCTS: FROM BIOLOGY TO INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY Abstracts

During last years, evidence has been provided on the involvement of obesity in the pathogenesis and aggravation of several life-threatening diseases. In this view, we set up an innovative protocol to induce a nanoparticle-mediated lipolysis in vitro by combining light and electron microscopy and biochemical approaches. Under appropriate administration conditions, 3T3-L1 mouse adipocytes proved to efficiently and safely internalize superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs), which are able to produce heat when subjected to alternating magnetic field (1;2;3). Thus, 3T3-L1 adipocytes were submitted to SPIONs-mediated hyperthermia treatment (SMHT), with the aim of modulating their lipid content (4,5). The treatment resulted in a significant delipidation persisting for at least 24 h, in the absence of cell death, damage or dedifferentiation. Interestingly, some factors normally linked with lipolysis event or in lipid metabolism (6) were not modulated upon SMHT, suggesting the involvement of a novel/alternative mechanism in the lipolysis observed. Notably, the same SMHT was able to induce delipidation also in primary cultures of human adipose-derived adult stem cells. The success of this new approach in vitro opens promising perspectives for the application of SMHT in different biomedical fields. Next steps could be the use of SION on sperimental model of obesity to analyze different metabolic pathway that are activated by the SMHT and also the application of SMHT on a sperimental model of cancer in obesity subjects to study the crosstalk between adipose and tumor tissues.