Nobel metal nanoparticles (gold and silver) are a fundamental tool for in vitro diagnostic and they promises to revolution allowing the detection of biomarker with a precision and a detection limits other ways impossible to achieve. The reason for this is due to their unique characteristics such as their intense color and the possibility to conjugate them with biomolecules such as aptamers or antibodies that provide specificity of action to the nanoparticles.

Many of the peculiar characteristic of this kind of nanoparticles are strongly dependent from the size and the shape of the obtained batch. Therefore there is a strong request to new method able to prepare gold and silver nanoparticles with a precise control in order to improve the repeatability and the effectiveness of the new in vitro diagnostic tests based on the use of nanoparticles.

In the last 5 years Labion has acquired an extensive experience in the synthesis of metallic nanoparticles with an optimal control on the shape and monodispersity. Besides, we developed reliable and effective synthetic protocols for the preparation of non-spherical nanoparticles such as nanorods and nanostars. These “special” nanoparticles that are characterized by superior plasmonic properties in comparison of the standard spherical ones but their use is still confined to few dedicated laboratories because of the difficulties in the synthesis.

The work done until now can be found in some publication of our group: