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Abstract
Cancer remains a second leading cause of death in the United States, according to recent statistics. There is an immediate demand for targeted delivery to affected tissues that will allow to decrease therapeutic dose, lower toxicity and manage side effects. Recently, there was a significant rise of interest on development and applications of composite nanomaterials. These materials hold unique chemical and physical properties for applications in biotechnology, medicine and pharmaceuticals. Advancements in synthetic methods led to rise of multifunctional nanomaterials that could simultaneously be used for multiple applications such as active targeting, medical imaging or drug delivery. The aim of current work was to expand recent findings and accomplishments and develop a drug delivery system for biomedical uses. Synthetic routes and strategies were designed to obtain well-defined and reproducible core-shell superparamagnetic nanoparticles. The nanomaterial is based on magnetite core, amorphous silica shell and polymer brush coating capable of carrying biomolecules. The system demonstrated magnetically-triggered catalytic activity with a well-controlled drug release with significant efficiency against cancer cells.