Bottom‐Up Preparation of Phase‐Separated Polymersomes

Abstract

A bottom‐up approach to fabricating monodisperse, two‐component polymersomes that possess phase‐separated (“patchy”) chemical topology is presented. This approach is compared with already‐existing top‐down preparation methods for patchy polymer vesicles, such as film rehydration. These findings demonstrate a bottom‐up, solvent‐switch self‐assembly approach that produces a high yield of nanoparticles of the target size, morphology, and surface topology for drug delivery applications, in this case patchy polymersomes of a diameter of ≈50 nm. In addition, an image processing algorithm to automatically calculate polymersome size distributions from transmission electron microscope images based on a series of pre‐processing steps, image segmentation, and round object identification is presented.

Glycan-Driven Formation of Raft-Like Domains with Hierarchical Periodic Nanoarrays on Dendrimersome Synthetic Cells

“…Raft domains are heterogeneous and dynamic subcompartments that regulate cellular functions ranging from signal transduction pathways to cell adhesion to migration to protein sorting to apoptosis. − Their size ranges from the nanoscale (10–200 nm) to the microscale (>300 nm) by clustering via protein–protein or protein–lipid interactions . The undeniable significance of rafts has spurred extensive research efforts. − On one hand, efforts have been geared to elucidate the elusive and dynamic nature of rafts. ,, On the other hand, their importance as relay station for reactivity has propelled research to mimic their functionality in minimal ,,, or synthetic systems ,,− and utilized them to gear the insertion of channel proteins and other functional components. This lateral organization, similar to rafts, has been achieved and studied in cell membrane mimics such as liposomes, ,− polymersomes from block or graft copolymers, ,,,, as well as hybrid systems of lipids and polymers ,− or lipids and proteins .…”

“…The undeniable significance of rafts has spurred extensive research efforts. − On one hand, efforts have been geared to elucidate the elusive and dynamic nature of rafts. ,, On the other hand, their importance as relay station for reactivity has propelled research to mimic their functionality in minimal ,,, or synthetic systems ,,− and utilized them to gear the insertion of channel proteins and other functional components. This lateral organization, similar to rafts, has been achieved and studied in cell membrane mimics such as liposomes, ,− polymersomes from block or graft copolymers, ,,,, as well as hybrid systems of lipids and polymers ,− or lipids and proteins . Moreover, these domains were employed to specifically target proteins ,,, and synthetic macromolecules …”