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BackgroundThe blood-brain barrier (BBB) represents an insurmountable obstacle for most drugs thus obstructing an effective treatment of many brain diseases. One solution for overcoming this barrier is a transport by binding of these drugs to surface-modified nanoparticles. Especially apolipoprotein E (ApoE) appears to play a major role in the nanoparticle-mediated drug transport across the BBB. However, at present the underlying mechanism is incompletely understood.Methodology/Principal FindingsIn this study, the uptake of the ApoE-modified nanoparticles into the brain capillary endothelial cells was investigated to differentiate between active and passive uptake mechanism by flow cytometry and confocal laser scanning microscopy. Furthermore, different in vitro co-incubation experiments were performed with competing ligands of the respective receptor.Conclusions/SignificanceThis study confirms an active endocytotic uptake mechanism and shows the involvement of low density lipoprotein receptor family members, notably the low density lipoprotein receptor related protein, on the uptake of the ApoE-modified nanoparticles into the brain capillary endothelial cells. This knowledge of the uptake mechanism of ApoE-modified nanoparticles enables future developments to rationally create very specific and effective carriers to overcome the blood-brain barrier.

We analyze the crystallization and collapse transition of a simple model for flexible polymer chains on simple-cubic and face-centered-cubic lattices by means of sophisticated chain-growth methods. In contrast to the bond-fluctuation polymer model in certain parameter ranges, where these two conformational transitions were found to merge in the thermodynamic limit, we conclude from our results that the two transitions remain well separated in the limit of infinite chain lengths. The reason for this qualitatively distinct behavior is presumably due to the ultrashort attractive interaction range in the lattice models considered here.

We introduce a parallel Wang-Landau method based on the replica-exchange framework for Monte Carlo simulations. To demonstrate its advantages and general applicability for simulations of complex systems, we apply it to different spin models including spin glasses, the Ising model, and the Potts model, lattice protein adsorption, and the self-assembly process in amphiphilic solutions. Without loss of accuracy, the method gives significant speed-up and potentially scales up to petaflop machines.

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