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Nano Shuttle Service into Cells
June 30, 2009
Shuttle Service into Cells
A team consisting of Wujie Zhang, a doctoral student in the Biothermostability Engineering Laboratory under the direction of Dr Xiaoming He in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering Program at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC working on nanomaterial synthesis closely with Dr Jianhua Rong, who was a visiting scholar in Dr Qian Wang's Lab in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Nano Center at the University of South Carolina developed a thermally responsive nanocapsule-mediated approach to deliver a significant amount of trehalose (342 Dalton) into eukaryotic mammalian cells (NIH 3T3 fibroblasts).
A schematic representation of the process of
nanocapsule-assisted intracellular delivery of trehalose: the
positively charged trehalose-loaded nanocapsule floating in culture
medium at 37 ?C (1) is attracted onto the negatively charged plasma
membrane and enwrapped in a clathrin-coated pit of the plasma
membrane (2). The coated pit then buds into the cytoplasm to form
the early endosome (~150 nm in size, 3). A cold shock treatment at
22 ?C results in breaking of the early endosome by the swollen
nanocapsule to release trehalose into the cytosol slowly by passive
diffusion (4). A quick release of the nanocapsule-encapsulated
trehalose can be achieved by heating the cells back to 37 oC to
squeeze the dissolved trehalose out of the nanocapsule as a result of
the more than 15-fold volume contraction (5)
This research is a significant mile stone on the path to develop hierarchically structured nanomaterials for studying cell–cell interactions and the cooperative response of cells to extracellular matrixes. Research in Dr He's lab has been focused on understanding and controlling the thermal stability of biologicals by micro/nano encapsulation and multiscale modeling. The goal is to stabilize important biologicals such as stem cells or destabilize unwanted biologicals, for example cancer cells, for the treatment of diseases.
Dr Xiaoming He
Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Qian Wang
Associate Professor and Robert L. Sumwalt Professor of Chemistry
The paper in Nanotechnology can be found at: :
http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0957-4484/20/27/275101/
A News Story can be accessed at:
http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/lab/39621