ABSTRACT
With the advancement of nanoscience and technology, there has been a tremendous growth in the field of biomedical science. Inorganic nanoparticles have been widely used in medical diagnostics and therapeutics such as cancer immunotherapy, drug delivery and bioimaging. However, these nanoparticles have severe limitations in terms of toxicity, propensity to aggregate, generation of reactive oxygen species and instability in some of the biological matrix. To tackle this problem, nanoparticles can be capped with amino acids to generate a cost-effective system with less cytotoxicity and more stability. Amino acids are building blocks of protein and depending on the functional groups they contain they can be either acidic, basic or neutral. Many of these functional groups have an affinity for a particular metal. Moreover, they themselves can exert useful biological activity. In this chapter synthesis and applications of amino acid stabilized inorganic nanoparticles in diagnosis have been elaborated in detail.
