Current biomedical applications of nanocarriers are focused
on
drug delivery, where encapsulated cargo is released in the target
tissues under the control of external stimuli. Here, we propose a
very different approach, where the active toxic molecules are removed
from biological tissues by the nanocarrier. It is based on the drug-sponge
concept, where specific molecules are captured by the lipid nanoemulsion
(NE) droplets due to dynamic covalent chemistry inside their oil core.
To this end, we designed a highly lipophilic amine (LipoAmine) capable
of reacting with a free cargo-aldehyde (fluorescent dye and 4-hydroxynonenal
toxin) directly inside lipid NEs, yielding a lipophilic imine conjugate
well encapsulated in the oil core. The formation of imine bonds was
first validated using a push-pull pyrene aldehyde dye, which changes
its emission color during the reaction. The conjugate formation was
independently confirmed by mass spectrometry. As a result, LipoAmine-loaded
NEs spontaneously loaded cargo-aldehydes, yielding formulations stable
against leakage at pH 7.4, which can further release the cargo in
a low pH range (4–6) in solutions and living cells. Using fluorescence
microscopy, we showed that LipoAmine NEs can extract pyrene aldehyde
dye from cells as well as from an epithelial tissue (chicken skin).
Moreover, successful extraction from cells was also achieved for a
highly toxic aliphatic aldehyde 4-hydroxynonenal, which allowed obtaining
the proof of concept for detoxification of living cells. Taken together,
these results show that the dynamic imine chemistry inside NEs can
be used to develop detoxification platforms.