INTRODUCTION: The blood-brain barrier (BBB) severely limits effective delivery of pharmaceutics to the brain, which poses significant clinical trouble especially in situations where the time window for drug administration is short, ie. in case of a stroke. There arises a need to design drug carriers yielding the best BBB penetration rate. Taking into account the complexity of BBB, no uniform template can be invented, so instead the project focuses on the prospect of highly customisable nanoparticle drug carrier capsules, investigating the extent to which their size can be controlled.

AIM(S): 1. Investigate whether the duration of synthesis reaction has an impact on the size of produced nanoparticles (NP) 2. Investigate to what extent the diameter of produced NP can be controlled (range of values, standard deviation (SD)) 3. Find the conditions required for synthesis of optimal for BBB penetration NP size (~50nm, supported by scientific articles)

METHOD(S): Green synthesis of NP, samples taken at three times: after 30 minutes, 40 minutes, and 60 minutes. DLS and TEM scans to review PDNP diameter and variance in size within groups.

RESULTS: The variance, SD and mean of nanoparticle diameters increases with reaction time. 30min: mean- 24.40nm; variance-7.380; SD-2.717 40min: mean- 26.99nm; variance-32.721; SD-5.720 60min: mean- 52.60nm; variance-68.123; SD-5.720

CONCLUSIONS: The diameter of NP can be controlled via adjusting reaction time, however the growth rate of NP becomes increasingly more erratic with time. Optimal for BBB transport NP were found in the 60min group, however the same group had the biggest variance and SD, suggesting decreased uniformity. While the 60min synthesis time yields the optimal NP size, it must be noted that there are many factors affecting the molecules ability to penetrate BBB, and depending on chosen method of transport, further modifications to NP structure must be made. Future extensions of this project should focus on applying cellular models to mimic in vitro efficiency.

FINANCIAL SUPPORT: None