Potential Use of DMSA‐Containing Iron Oxide Nanoparticles as Magnetic Vehicles against the COVID‐19 Disease

Martins, Elisama S.; Espindola, Ariane; Britos, Tatiane N.; Chagas, Camila; Barbosa, Emerson; Castro, Carlos E.; Fonseca, Fernando L. A.; Haddad, Paula S.

Iron oxide magnetic nanoparticles have been employed as potential vehicles for a large number of biomedical applications, such as drug delivery. This article describes the synthesis, characterization and in vitro cytotoxic in COVID‐19 cells evaluation of DMSA superparamagnetic iron oxide magnetic nanoparticles. Magnetite (Fe(3)O(4)) nanoparticles were synthesized by co‐precipitation of iron salts and coated with meso‐2,3‐dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA) molecule. Structural and morphological characterizations were performed by X‐ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transformed infrared (FT‐IR), magnetic measurements (SQUID), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and dynamic light scattering (DLS). Our results demonstrate that the nanoparticles have a mean diameter of 12 nm in the solid‐state and are superparamagnetic at room temperature. There is no toxicity of SPIONS‐DMSA under the cells of patients with COVID‐19. Taken together the results show that DMSA‐ Fe(3)O(4) are good candidates as nanocarriers in the alternative treatment of studied cells.