The morphology of the particle composites was analyzed using a scanning electron microscope (SEM, S-3400, Hitachi Ltd, Tokyo, Japan) and a transmission electron microscope (TEM, FEI Tecnai G2 20 S-Twin; FEI Company, Hillsboro, OR, USA) equipped with a METEK (PV 97–56700 ME) X-ray energy dispersive spectrometer click here (METEK Meteorologische Messtechnik GmbH, Elmshorn, Germany). Cell viability test The viability of the control and the treated cells were evaluated using 3-(4,5-cimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay

with human breast adenocarcinoma MCF-7 cells (1 × 104/well) seeded in a 96-well microtiter plate with a 100 μL culture medium treated with various amounts of Pt NPs@Selleck GM6001 alginate bubbles. After 1 day exposure, a 200-μL MTT solution was added to react with the cells for 4 h. After removal of the medium, 100 μL DMSO was added and examined at 595 nm

using a microplate reader (Multiskan Ascent, Thermo Electron Corporation, Vantaa, Finland). The control group in the untreated Selleck Ferrostatin-1 well was considered to be 100%. Results and discussion Pt NPs@alginate bubbles Alginate is a kind of polysaccharide from marine brown algae. A variety of fundamental properties such as excellent biodegradability and biocompatibility make alginate a very attractive material for applications. Alginate has been applied in diverse areas [34–36] including serving biomedical materials for drug delivery and tissue engineering, and

being adsorbent materials for elimination of heavy metals or organic pollutants [37]. Due to acid dissolution, conventional Pt NPs@chitosan bubbles have constraint applications for limited pH conditions. Therefore, it is needed to develop Pt NPs@alginate bubbles for wide pH applications. Lck Figure 2 shows the effects of CaCl2 concentration on Pt NPs@alginate bubbles. Results indicate that the size of the bubbles decreases with the CaCl2 concentration. The difference between the two alginate materials with distinct viscosities was not significant. The size of bubbles reaches 1 mm at 1% CaCl2, but only 0.4 mm at 20% CaCl2. The reason may be attributed to a lower crosslinking rate of alginate in a low CaCl2 concentration. The alginate pregel allows entrapped small bubbles merging into lager bubbles before gel network (solidification) formation in a low CaCl2 concentration. Figure 2 Alginate bubbles with different CaCl 2 concentrations. (A and D) 1% CaCl2; (B and E) 10% CaCl2; (C and F) 20% CaCl2. Alginate in (A to C) and (D to F) are 150 and 350 cp, respectively. All scale bars are 2 mm. Figure 3 shows the effects of NaBH4 concentration on Pt NPs@alginate bubbles. The results indicate that the number of bubbles within an alginate particle increases with NaBH4 concentration, but there is no significant difference between two alginate materials. There are no obvious bubbles in the low 1 mM NaBH4 due to the little amount of entrapped gas.