Carriers that release hydrophobic substances at cell membranes but do not enter the cells themselves could be the foundation for a new way to deliver drugs into cells, according to a team of scientists in Germany.
Mailänder and his team tested their approach using biodegradable poly-L-lactide nanoparticles that fleetingly touch the cell’s phospholipid layer for around 100ms to release their cargo, in this case a hydrophobic dye that was left to stain the cell membrane, before quickly detaching from the cell – hence the term ‘kiss-and-run.’ They later found that the dye, representing water-insoluble drug cargo, was ultimately stored as lipid droplets within the cell.
Read the full article in Chemistry World»
Read the original journal article in ChemComm:
Drug delivery without nanoparticle uptake: delivery by a kiss-and-run mechanism on the cell membrane
Daniel Hofmann, Claudia Messerschmidt, Markus B. Bannwarth, Katharina Landfester and Volker Mailänder
Chem. Commun., 2014, Advance Article, DOI: 10.1039/C3CC48130A
