Nanoparticles are an essential component in the emerging field of nanomedical imaging and therapy. When deployed in vivo, these materials are typically protected from the immune system by polyethylene glycol (PEG). A wide variety of strategies to coat and characterize nanoparticles with PEG has established important trends on PEG size, shape, density, loading level, molecular weight, charge and purification. Strategies to incorporate targeting ligands are also prevalent. This article presents a background to investigators new to stealth nanoparticles, and suggests some key considerations needed prior to designing a nanoparticle PEGylation protocol and characterizing the performance features of the product.
Methods based on self-assembly, self-organization, and forced shape transformations to form synthetic or semisynthetic enclosed lipid bilayer structures with several properties similar to biological nanocompartments are reviewed. The procedures offer unconventional micro- and nanofabrication routes to yield complex soft-matter devices for a variety of applications for example, in physical chemistry and nanotechnology. In particular, we describe novel micromanipulation methods for producing fluid-state lipid bilayer networks of nanotubes and surface-immobilized vesicles with controlled geometry, topology, membrane composition, and interior contents. Mass transport in nanotubes and materials exchange, for example, between conjugated containers, can be controlled by creating a surface tension gradient that gives rise to a moving boundary or by induced shape transformations. The network devices can operate with extremely small volume elements and low mass, to the limit of single molecules and particles at a length scale where a continuum mechanics approximation may break down. Thus, we also describe some concepts of anomalous fluctuation-dominated kinetics and anomalous diffusive behaviours, including hindered transport, as they might become important in studying chemistry and transport phenomena in these confined systems. The networks are suitable for initiating and controlling chemical reactions in confined biomimetic compartments for rationalizing, for example, enzyme behaviors, as well as for applications in nanofluidics, bioanalytical devices, and to construct computational and complex sensor systems with operations building on chemical kinetics, coupled reactions and controlled mass transport.
Bilayer membranes envelope cells as well as organelles, and constitute the most ubiquitous biological material found in all branches of the phylogenetic tree. Cell membrane rupture is an important biological process, and substantial rupture rates are found in skeletal and cardiac muscle cells under a mechanical load. Rupture can also be induced by processes such as cell death, and active cell membrane repair mechanisms are essential to preserve cell integrity. Pore formation in cell membranes is also at the heart of many biomedical applications such as in drug, gene and short interfering RNA delivery. Membrane rupture dynamics has been studied in bilayer vesicles under tensile stress, which consistently produce circular pores. We observed very different rupture mechanics in bilayer membranes spreading on solid supports: in one instance fingering instabilities were seen resulting in floral-like pores and in another, the rupture proceeded in a series of rapid avalanches causing fractal membrane fragmentation. The intermittent character of rupture evolution and the broad distribution in avalanche sizes is consistent with crackling-noise dynamics. Such noisy dynamics appear in fracture of solid disordered materials, in dislocation avalanches in plastic deformations and domain wall magnetization avalanches. We also observed similar fractal rupture mechanics in spreading cell membranes.
Small interfering RNA (siRNA) is a highly potent drug in gene-based therapy with a challenge of being delivered in a sustained manner. Nanoparticle drug delivery systems allow for incorporating and controlled release of therapeutic payloads. We demonstrate that solid lipid nanoparticles can incorporate and provide sustained release of siRNA. Tristearin solid lipid nanoparticles, made by nanoprecipitation, were loaded with siRNA (4.4–5.5 weight percent loading ratio) using a hydrophobic ion pairing approach that employs the cationic lipid DOTAP. Intradermal injection of these nanocarriers in mouse footpads resulted in prolonged siRNA release over a period of 10–13 days. In vitro cell studies showed that the released siRNA retained its activity. Nanoparticles developed in this study offer an alternative approach to polymeric nanoparticles for encapsulation and sustained delivery of siRNA with the advantage of being prepared from physiologically well-tolerated materials.
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