Werner Marco, Auth Thorsten, Beales Paul A, Fleury Jean Baptiste, Höök Fredrik, Kress Holger, Van Lehn Reid C, Müller Marcus, Petrov Eugene P, Sarkisov Lev, Sommer Jens-Uwe, Baulin Vladimir A
Departament d'Enginyeria Química, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, 26 Avinguda dels Països Catalans, 43007 Tarragona, Spain.
Theoretical Soft Matter and Biophysics, Institute of Complex Systems and Institute for Advanced Simulation, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany.
Biointerphases. 2018 Apr 3;13(2):028501. doi: 10.1116/1.5022145.
Synthetic polymers, nanoparticles, and carbon-based materials have great potential in applications including drug delivery, gene transfection, in vitro and in vivo imaging, and the alteration of biological function. Nature and humans use different design strategies to create nanomaterials: biological objects have emerged from billions of years of evolution and from adaptation to their environment resulting in high levels of structural complexity; in contrast, synthetic nanomaterials result from minimalistic but controlled design options limited by the authors' current understanding of the biological world. This conceptual mismatch makes it challenging to create synthetic nanomaterials that possess desired functions in biological media. In many biologically relevant applications, nanomaterials must enter the cell interior to perform their functions. An essential transport barrier is the cell-protecting plasma membrane and hence the understanding of its interaction with nanomaterials is a fundamental task in biotechnology. The authors present open questions in the field of nanomaterial interactions with biological membranes, including: how physical mechanisms and molecular forces acting at the nanoscale restrict or inspire design options; which levels of complexity to include next in computational and experimental models to describe how nanomaterials cross barriers via passive or active processes; and how the biological media and protein corona interfere with nanomaterial functionality. In this Perspective, the authors address these questions with the aim of offering guidelines for the development of next-generation nanomaterials that function in biological media.
合成聚合物、纳米颗粒和碳基材料在药物递送、基因转染、体外和体内成像以及生物功能改变等应用中具有巨大潜力。自然界和人类采用不同的设计策略来制造纳米材料：生物物体历经数十亿年的进化以及对环境的适应而形成，具有高度的结构复杂性；相比之下，合成纳米材料则源于简约但可控的设计选择，不过受到作者目前对生物世界的理解所限。这种概念上的不匹配使得制造在生物介质中具有所需功能的合成纳米材料颇具挑战性。在许多与生物相关的应用中，纳米材料必须进入细胞内部才能发挥其功能。一个关键的运输屏障是保护细胞的质膜，因此了解其与纳米材料的相互作用是生物技术中的一项基本任务。作者提出了纳米材料与生物膜相互作用领域中的开放性问题，包括：在纳米尺度上起作用的物理机制和分子力如何限制或启发设计选择；在计算和实验模型中接下来应纳入何种复杂程度来描述纳米材料如何通过被动或主动过程跨越屏障；以及生物介质和蛋白质冠层如何干扰纳米材料的功能。在这篇观点文章中，作者探讨这些问题，旨在为开发在生物介质中发挥作用的下一代纳米材料提供指导方针。
