CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials), Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, P. R. China.
Nanoscale. 2018 Jul 5;10(25):11969-11979. doi: 10.1039/c8nr01521j.
Understanding the interactions of nanoparticles (NPs) with cell membranes and regulating their cellular uptake processes are of fundamental importance to the design of drug delivery systems with minimum toxicity, high efficiency and long circulation time. Employing the procedure of coarse-graining, we built an elastically deformable NP model with tunable morphological and mechanical properties. We found that the cellular uptake of deformable NPs depends on their shape: an increase in the particle elasticity significantly slows the uptake rate of spherical NPs, slightly retards that of prolate NPs, and promotes the uptake of oblate NPs. The intrinsic mechanisms have been carefully investigated through analysis of the endocytic mechanisms and free energy calculations. These findings provide unique insights into how deformable NPs penetrate across cell membranes and offer novel possibilities for designing effective NP-based carriers for drug delivery.
了解纳米颗粒 (NPs) 与细胞膜的相互作用并调节其细胞摄取过程对于设计具有最小毒性、高效率和长循环时间的药物输送系统至关重要。通过粗粒化方法，我们构建了一个具有可调形态和机械性能的弹性变形 NP 模型。我们发现，可变形 NPs 的细胞摄取取决于它们的形状：增加颗粒弹性会显著降低球形 NPs 的摄取速率，略微延迟长形 NPs 的摄取速率，促进扁形 NPs 的摄取。通过分析内吞作用机制和自由能计算，仔细研究了内在机制。这些发现为可变形 NPs 如何穿透细胞膜提供了独特的见解，并为设计有效的基于 NP 的药物输送载体提供了新的可能性。
