Haghgooie Ramin, Toner Mehmet, Doyle Patrick S
BioMEMS Resource Center, Center for Engineering in Medicine and Surgical Services, Massachusetts General Hospital, Shriners Hospital for Children, and Harvard Medical School, 114 16th Street, Room 1239, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA.
Macromol Rapid Commun. 2010 Jan 18;31(2):128-34. doi: 10.1002/marc.200900302. Epub 2009 Sep 18.
Recent advances in the synthesis of polymeric colloids have opened the doors to new advanced materials. There is strong interest in using these new techniques to produce particles that mimic and/or interact with biological systems. An important characteristic of biological systems that has not yet been exploited in synthetic polymeric colloids is their wide range of deformability. A canonical example of this is the human red blood cell (RBC) which exhibits extreme reversible deformability under flow. Here we report the synthesis of soft polymeric colloids with sizes and shapes that mimic those of the RBC. Additionally, we demonstrate that the mechanical flexibility of the colloids can be reproducibly varied over a large range resulting in RBC-like deformability under physiological flow conditions. These materials have the potential to impact the interaction between biological and synthetic systems.
聚合物胶体合成方面的最新进展为新型先进材料打开了大门。人们对利用这些新技术生产模拟生物系统和/或与生物系统相互作用的颗粒有着浓厚兴趣。合成聚合物胶体尚未利用的生物系统的一个重要特征是其广泛的可变形性。一个典型的例子是人类红细胞（RBC），它在流动状态下表现出极高的可逆变形性。在此，我们报告了尺寸和形状模拟红细胞的软质聚合物胶体的合成。此外，我们证明了胶体的机械柔韧性可以在很大范围内可重复地变化，从而在生理流动条件下产生类似红细胞的变形性。这些材料有可能影响生物系统与合成系统之间的相互作用。
