Durán Sara, Duch Marta, Gómez-Martínez Rodrigo, Fernández-Regúlez Marta, Agusil Juan Pablo, Reina Manuel, Müller Claudia, Paulo Álvaro San, Esteve Jaume, Castel Susana, Plaza José A
Instituto de Microelectrónica de Barcelona, IMB-CNM (CSIC), Campus UAB, Cerdanyola, 08193 Barcelona, Spain.
Departamento de Biología Celular, Fisiología e Inmunología, Facultad de Biología, Universitat de Barcelona, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.
Nanomaterials (Basel). 2020 May 7;10(5):893. doi: 10.3390/nano10050893.
Micrometer-sized silicon chips have been demonstrated to be cell-internalizable, offering the possibility of introducing in cells even smaller nanoelements for intracellular applications. On the other hand, silicon nanowires on extracellular devices have been widely studied as biosensors or drug delivery systems. Here, we propose the integration of silicon nanowires on cell-internalizable chips in order to combine the functional features of both approaches for advanced intracellular applications. As an initial fundamental study, the cellular uptake in HeLa cells of silicon 3 µm × 3 µm nanowire-based chips with two different morphologies was investigated, and the results were compared with those of non-nanostructured silicon chips. Chip internalization without affecting cell viability was achieved in all cases; however, important cell behavior differences were observed. In particular, the first stage of cell internalization was favored by silicon nanowire interfaces with respect to bulk silicon. In addition, chips were found inside membrane vesicles, and some nanowires seemed to penetrate the cytosol, which opens the door to the development of silicon nanowire chips as future intracellular sensors and drug delivery systems.
微米级硅芯片已被证明可被细胞内化，这为在细胞内引入甚至更小的纳米元件以用于细胞内应用提供了可能性。另一方面，细胞外装置上的硅纳米线已作为生物传感器或药物递送系统得到广泛研究。在此，我们提议将硅纳米线集成到可被细胞内化的芯片上，以便结合这两种方法的功能特性用于先进的细胞内应用。作为一项初步的基础研究，我们研究了具有两种不同形态的3微米×3微米硅纳米线基芯片在HeLa细胞中的细胞摄取情况，并将结果与非纳米结构的硅芯片进行了比较。在所有情况下都实现了芯片内化且不影响细胞活力；然而，观察到了重要的细胞行为差异。特别是，相对于块状硅，硅纳米线界面有利于细胞内化的第一阶段。此外，在膜泡内发现了芯片，并且一些纳米线似乎穿透了细胞质，这为将硅纳米线芯片开发为未来的细胞内传感器和药物递送系统打开了大门。
