Noble metal nanoparticles as privileged component of innovative nanodrug

Noble metal nanoparticles (NPs) composed of gold and/or silver, are versatile agents endowed with unique physico-chemical properties that recently have acquired great interest for applications ranging from catalysis to nanomedicine. The use of environmentally friendly substrates such as plant extracts, biomolecules, and biopolymers has gained increasing interest since they can be considered ideal reagents as they meet all the required conditions of biocompatibility and accessibility, but they also have multipurpose action as reducing, capping and shape-directing agents [1-2]. Here, we discuss a straightforward synthetic strategy that exploits the properties of polymers containing in their backbone β-cyclodextrin units to act as both reducing and stabilizing agents to produce monodispersed and stable gold-based NPs either as monometallic (nanoG) structures or core-shell bimetallic (nanoGS) architectures with the external layer of silver. Finally, the combination of both monometallic or bimetallic Gold NPs with antimicrobial [2- 3] or anti-inflammatory agents (i.e, linezolid, pentamidine, diclofenac) was exploited for the development of innovative nanodrugs. The morphology, size and colloidal stability of NPs were investigated by UV–vis spectroscopy, zeta potential (ζ) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) measurements, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The role of biopolymers in the formation/stabilization of NPs was partially clarified by FT-IR and DEPT-edited HSQC analyses.