Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA.
Multi-Scale Robotics Lab, Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, ETH Zürich, Tannestrasse 3, CH-8092 Zürich, Switzerland.
Nanoscale. 2023 Sep 21;15(36):14800-14808. doi: 10.1039/d3nr02418k.
Piezoelectric nanomaterials have become increasingly popular in the field of biomedical applications due to their high biocompatibility and ultrasound-mediated piezocatalytic properties. In addition, the ability of these nanomaterials to disaggregate amyloid proteins, which are responsible for a range of diseases resulting from the accumulation of these proteins in body tissues and organs, has recently gained considerable attention. However, the use of nanoparticles in biomedicine poses significant challenges, including targeting and uncontrolled aggregation. To address these limitations, our study proposes to load these functional nanomaterials on a multifunctional mobile microrobot (PiezoBOT). This microrobot is designed by coating magnetic and piezoelectric barium titanate nanoparticles on helical biotemplates, allowing for the combination of magnetic navigation and ultrasound-mediated piezoelectric effects to target amyloid disaggregation. Our findings demonstrate that acoustically actuated PiezoBOTs can effectively reduce the size of aggregated amyloid proteins by over 80% in less than 10 minutes by shortening and dissociating constituent amyloid fibrils. Moreover, the PiezoBOTs can be easily magnetically manipulated to actuate the piezocatalytic nanoparticles to specific amyloidosis-affected tissues or organs, minimizing side effects. These biocompatible PiezoBOTs offer a promising non-invasive therapeutic approach for amyloidosis diseases by targeting and breaking down protein aggregates at specific organ or tissue sites.
压电纳米材料由于其高生物相容性和超声介导的压催化特性，在生物医学应用领域越来越受欢迎。此外，这些纳米材料能够解聚淀粉样蛋白，而淀粉样蛋白的积累是导致身体组织和器官中一系列疾病的原因，这一特性最近引起了相当大的关注。然而，纳米颗粒在生物医学中的应用存在重大挑战，包括靶向和不受控制的聚集。为了解决这些限制，我们的研究提出将这些功能纳米材料负载在多功能移动微机器人（PiezoBOT）上。这种微机器人是通过在螺旋生物模板上涂覆磁性和压电钛酸钡纳米颗粒设计而成的，允许结合磁导航和超声介导的压电效应来靶向淀粉样蛋白解聚。我们的研究结果表明，声激活的 PiezoBOT 在不到 10 分钟的时间内通过缩短和解离组成的淀粉样蛋白纤维，可有效将聚集的淀粉样蛋白的大小减少超过 80%。此外，PiezoBOT 可以很容易地通过磁场操纵来激活压催化纳米颗粒，以靶向特定的淀粉样变性组织或器官，从而最小化副作用。这些生物相容的 PiezoBOT 通过靶向和分解特定器官或组织部位的蛋白质聚集体，为淀粉样变性疾病提供了一种有前途的非侵入性治疗方法。
