ИСТИНА

Abstract: State-of-the-art research trends look somewhat similar for studies in biomedicine and in various case s of nanomaterial assessment in technology. Sometimes, early studies in artificial mixtures (for technology) or purely in vitro studies (for biomedicine) quickly jump to actual application environments or in vivo studies. However, such a quick ‘long’ jump changes too many parameters of the system in question and one cannot say a priori that the behavior of the test entity in artificial conditions will be replicated in real systems. As well, not all the parameters of the system in question can be readily monitored in vivo or in a real application with ease. Thus, a test platform, which can be considered as an intermediate step between initial in vitro/test studies and in vivo/real applications, is of a great value [1, 2]. Such intermediate (or ex vivo) platforms are known to be based on organized media of hydrophilic polymers—either micellar or structural—polyethylene glycols, various membranes, or hydrogels [3-6]. The polymer modification of the solution stabilizes and mildly fixes nanoparticles, micelles, or cells in place and provides the overall physicochemical properties closer to the intended real application of the test entity. On the other hand, the field of application of photothermal spectroscopy for heterogeneous materials (solid and liquid), including dynamic heterogeneities, develops rapidly and extensively. This includes sensing and analysis of various nanoparticles, biologically active complexes, and cells. As the photothermal signal strongly depends on the parameters of the solution, it could change advantageously and crucially if an aqueous medium contains nanoparticles, micelles, or polymers. Thus, polymer-based organized media can provide very sensitive and distnict measurement of test entities with photothermal spectroscopy in various environments. Moreover, due to its intrinsic sensitivity, versatility, and non-destructivity, photothermal spectroscopy can be a valuable assessment/probing unit of such a test polymer-based platform. The examples of this study will include use of several polymer and surfactant-based organized media for the photothermal (thermal-lens) detection and investigation of carbon nanomaterials (unmodified fullerenes and detonation nanodiamonds) and some (heme) proteins and their supramolecular complexes with metal chelates, lipids, etc. The applications of photothermal spectroscopy for the quantification and size estimation of these test materials will be discussed. The data obtained by photothermal spectroscopy will be compared with the data from other relevant analytical methods, mainly of spectrochemical analysis.