Sun Huanli, Björnmalm Mattias, Cui Jiwei, Wong Edgar H H, Dai Yunlu, Dai Qiong, Qiao Greg G, Caruso Frank
ARC Centre of Excellence in Convergent Bio-Nano Science and Technology and ‡Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia.
ARC Centre of Excellence in Convergent Bio-Nano Science and Technology and Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia.
ACS Macro Lett. 2015 Nov 17;4(11):1205-1209. doi: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.5b00591. Epub 2015 Oct 19.
Particle stiffness is a design parameter that affects bionano interactions, including biodistribution kinetics and cellular processing. Herein, we develop soft polysaccharide (hyaluronic acid, HA) replica particles and capsules with tunable stiffness and sizes similar to human red blood cells (RBCs) via atom transfer radical polymerization-mediated continuous assembly of polymers (CAP) and investigate their stiffness and deformability using colloidal-probe atomic force microscopy (CP-AFM) and a microfluidic blood capillary model, respectively. We demonstrate that HA replica particles and capsules with comparable nanoscale stiffness exhibit significantly different behaviors in a microfluidic blood capillary model. HA capsules behaved as RBCs, while HA replica particles had difficulty passing through the capillaries. These results (i) demonstrate how flow-based deformability measurements can be used to complement nanoscale stiffness measurements and (ii) provide important insight into the role of particle structure on the flow-based deformability of soft replica particles and capsules in a physiologically relevant microfluidic model.
颗粒硬度是一个影响生物纳米相互作用的设计参数，包括生物分布动力学和细胞处理过程。在此，我们通过原子转移自由基聚合介导的聚合物连续组装（CAP），开发出具有可调硬度且尺寸与人红细胞（RBC）相似的软多糖（透明质酸，HA）复制颗粒和胶囊，并分别使用胶体探针原子力显微镜（CP-AFM）和微流控毛细血管模型研究它们的硬度和可变形性。我们证明，具有相当纳米级硬度的HA复制颗粒和胶囊在微流控毛细血管模型中表现出显著不同的行为。HA胶囊的行为类似于红细胞，而HA复制颗粒难以通过毛细血管。这些结果（i）证明了基于流动的可变形性测量如何可用于补充纳米级硬度测量，以及（ii）为颗粒结构在生理相关微流控模型中对软复制颗粒和胶囊基于流动的可变形性的作用提供了重要见解。
