ATA and TA coated superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles: Promising candidates for magnetic hyperthermia therapy

In recent times, superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) are widely used as heating agents in magnetic hyperthermia therapy (MHT) to kill malignant cells in cancer treatments, which is mainly due to their excellent magnetic properties and biocompatibility. However, it is still a challenge to coat SPIONs with suitable surfactants and to apply an appropriate alternative magnetic field (AMF) at specific frequency to achieve enhanced heating effects in MHT. In this work, the as-synthesized novel short-chain surfactants (i.e., amino-terephthalic acid (ATA) and terephthalic acid (TA)) coated hydrophilic SPIONs are synthesized and subsequently involved in calorimetric hyperthermia studies to investigate their intrinsic heating capability by varying (i) their concentrations from 1 - 8 mgFe/ml and (ii) AMFs at different frequencies (263.2 – 752.39 kHz) while achieving the temperature above 42 °C – therapeutic hyperthermia temperature. It is found that the heating rate of TA-SPIONs i