Magnetic nanostructures for therapy and diagnostics in biomedicine.

Starting from the new millennium the interest for the study of superparamagnetic nanoparticles (NPs) has progressively increased with the ability in manipulating matter at the nanoscale. This has paved the way to the creation of a plethora of novel systems characterized by extremely appealing properties exploitable in a wide number of clinical theranostic applications: the most prominent are Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Magnetic Fluid Hyperthermia (MFH). Superparamagnetic nanoparticles are nanometric objects composed by a magnetic core (usually based on magnetite or maghemite) covered with an organic coating. In this framework, we investigated the NPs properties for their application as contrast agents for MRI (diagnostics) and heating agents for MFH (therapy). In particular we focused on their magnetic, relaxometric and hyperthermic properties, in order to improve their efficiency. We verified these features as a function of the kind and size of magnetic core ion, of the shape of the NPs and of the kind of coating.