Nanoscale Res Lett (2009) 4:70–77 DOI 10.1007/s11671-008-9204-7 N A N O E X P R E S S The Effect of Iron Oxide Magnetic Nanoparticles on Smooth Muscle Cells Song Zhang Æ Xiangjian Chen Æ Chunrong Gu Æ Yu Zhang Æ Jindan Xu Æ Zhiping Bian Æ Di Yang Æ Ning Gu Received: 17 September 2008 / Accepted: 29 October 2008 / Published online: 2 December 2008 to the authors 2008 Abstract Recently, magnetic nanoparticles of iron oxide (Fe3O4, c-Fe2O3) have shown an increasing number of applications in the ﬁeld of biomedicine, but some questions have been raised about the potential impact of these nanoparticles on the environment and human health. In this work, the three types of magnetic nanoparticles (DMSA- Fe2O3, APTS-Fe2O3, and GLU-Fe2O3) with the same crystal structure, magnetic properties, and size distribution was designed, prepared, and characterized by transmission electronic microscopy, powder X-ray diffraction, zeta potential analyzer, vibrating sample magnetometer, and Fourier transform Infrared spectroscopy. Then, we have investigated the effect of the three types of magnetic nanoparticles (DMSA-Fe2O3, APTS-Fe2O3, and GLU- Fe2O3) on smooth muscle cells (SMCs). Cellular uptake of nanoparticles by SMC displays the dose, the incubation time and surface property dependent patterns. Through the thin section TEM images, we observe that DMSA-Fe2O3 is incorporated into the lysosome of SMCs. The magnetic nanoparticles have no inﬂammation impact, but decrease the viability of SMCs. The other questions about Song Zhang and Xiangjian Chen contributed equally to this work. S. Zhang Y. Zhang N. Gu (&) State Key Laboratory of Molecule and Biomolecule Electronics, Jiangsu Provincial Laboratory for Biomaterials and Devices, Southeast University, 210096 Nanjing, People’s Republic of China e-mail: guning@seu.edu.cn X. Chen C. Gu J. Xu Z. Bian D. Yang (&) Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, The First Afﬁliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, 210029 Nanjing, People’s Republic of China e-mail: dyang@public1.ptt.js.cn 123 metabolism and other impacts will be the next subject of further studies. Keywords Magnetic nanoparticles Iron oxide Smooth muscle cells Cellular uptake Viability Introduction Magnetic nanomaterial has shown an increasing number of applications in different ﬁelds of information, mechanics, and biomedicine due to their multifunctional properties such as small size effect, superparamagnetism, inherently biocompatibility, etc. [1–4]. Especially in the last decade, the ﬁeld of biomedicine witnessed an explosion of interest in the use of magnetic nanomaterial in earlier diagnosis and effective treatment of some diseases, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) [5, 6], drug delivery [7–11], hyperthermia, etc. [12, 13]. In MRI, magnetic nanoparticles serve as contrast enhancement agents, in drug delivery, they function as drug carriers delivering and releasing the drug into target cells, while in hyperthermia, they serve as generator of heat under alternating current magnetic ﬁeld. In certain cases, the employment based on magnetic nanomaterial has displayed signiﬁcant advantages over conventional material with regard to assay sensitivity, effect of treatment, side effect, etc. In biological applications, the current magnetic nano- particles (MNPs) of iron oxide (Fe3O4, c-Fe2O3) may be modest and biocompatible [14, 15], but some questions have been raised about the potential impact of these nanoparticles on the environment and human health. Numerous investigations have been carried out using iron oxides nanoparticles linked to their high mobility and speciﬁc reactivity with cells. Some results indicate that iron