Most potent therapeutics are unable to cross the blood-brain barrier following systemic administration, which necessitates the development of unconventional, clinically applicable drug delivery systems. With the given challenges, biologically active vehicles are crucial to accomplishing this task. We now report a new method for drug delivery that utilizes living cells as vehicles for drug carriage across the blood brain barrier. Cellular backpacks, 7–10 µm diameter polymer patches of a few hundred nanometers in thickness, are a potentially interesting approach, because they can act as drug depots that travel with the cell-carrier, without being phagocytized. Backpacks loaded with a potent antioxidant, catalase, were attached to autologous macrophages and systemically administered into mice with brain inflammation. Using inflammatory response cells enabled targeted drug transport to the inflamed brain. Furthermore, catalase-loaded backpacks demonstrated potent therapeutic effects deactivating free radicals released by activated microglia in vitro. This approach for drug carriage and release can accelerate the development of new drug formulations for all the neurodegenerative disorders.

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Successful transformation of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) into value-added products is of great interest, as it contributes in part to the circular carbon economy. Understanding chemical interactions that stabilize crucial reaction intermediates of CO 2 is important, and in this contribution, we employ atom centered density matrix propagation (ADMP) molecular dynamics simulations to investigate interactions between CO 2 – anion radicals with surrounding solvent molecules and electrolyte cations in both aqueous and nonaqueous environments. We show how different cations and solvents affect the stability of the CO 2 – anion radical by examining its angle and distance to a coordinating cation in molecular dynamics simulations. We identify that the strength of CO 2 – interactions can be tailored through choosing an appropriate cation and solvent combination. We anticipate that this fundamental understanding of cation/solvent interactions can facilitate the optimization of a chemical pathway that results from selective stabilization of a crucial reaction intermediate.

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