Anionic nanoparticle-induced perturbation to phospholipid membranes affects ion channel function

Ligand Lipophilicity Determines Molecular Mechanisms of Nanoparticle Adsorption to Lipid Bilayers

The interactions of ligand-functionalized nanoparticles with the cell membrane affect cellular uptake, cytotoxicity, and related behaviors, but relating these interactions to ligand properties remains challenging. In this work, we perform coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations to study how the adsorption of ligand-functionalized cationic gold nanoparticles (NPs) to a single-component lipid bilayer (as a model cell membrane) is influenced by ligand end group lipophilicity. A set of 2 nm diameter NPs, each coated with a monolayer of organic ligands that differ only in their end groups, was simulated to mimic NPs recently studied experimentally. Metadynamics calculations were performed to determine key features of the free energy landscape for adsorption as a function of the distance of the NP from the bilayer and the number of NP-lipid contacts. These simulations revealed that NP adsorption is thermodynamically favorable for all NPs due to the extraction of lipids from the bilayer and into the NP monolayer. To resolve ligand-dependent differences in adsorption behavior, string method calculations were performed to compute minimum free energy pathways for adsorption. These calculations revealed a surprising nonmonotonic dependence of the free energy barrier for adsorption on ligand end group lipophilicity. Large free energy barriers are predicted for the least lipophilic end groups because favorable NP-lipid contacts are initiated only through the unfavorable protrusion of lipid tail groups out of the bilayer. The smallest free energy barriers are predicted for end groups of intermediate lipophilicity which promote NP-lipid contacts by intercalating within the bilayer. Unexpectedly, large free energy barriers are also predicted for the most lipophilic end groups which remain sequestered within the ligand monolayer rather than intercalating within the bilayer. These trends are broadly in agreement with past experimental measurements and reveal how subtle variations in ligand lipophilicity dictate adsorption mechanisms and associated kinetics by influencing the interplay of lipid-ligand interactions.

Engineered Nanomaterials for Immunomodulation: A Review

The immune system usually provides a defense against invading pathogenic microorganisms and any other particulate contaminants. Nonetheless, it has been recently reported that nanomaterials can evade the immune system and modulate immunological responses due to their unique physicochemical characteristics. Consequently, nanomaterial-based activation of immune components, i.e., neutrophils, macrophages, and other effector cells, may induce inflammation and alter the immune response. Here, it is essential to distinguish the acute and chronic modulations triggered by nanomaterials to determine the possible risks to human health. Nanomaterials size, shape, composition, surface charge, and deformability are factors controlling their uptake by immune cells and the resulting immune responses. The exterior corona of molecules adsorbed over nanomaterials surfaces also influences their immunological effects. Here, we review current nanoengineering trends for targeted immunomodulation with an emphasis on the design, safety, and potential toxicity of nanomaterials. First, we describe the characteristics of engineered nanomaterials that trigger immune responses. Then, the biocompatibility and immunotoxicity of nanoengineered particles are debated, because these factors influence applications. Finally, future nanomaterial developments in terms of surface modifications, synergistic approaches, and biomimetics are discussed.

Metal-based nanoparticles in antibacterial application in biomedical field: Current development and potential mechanisms

The rise in drug resistance in pathogenic bacteria greatly endangers public health in the post-antibiotic era, and drug-resistant bacteria currently pose a great challenge not only to the community but also to clinical procedures, including surgery, stent implantation, organ transplantation, and other medical procedures involving any open wound and compromised human immunity. Biofilm-associated drug failure, as well as rapid resistance to last-resort antibiotics, necessitates the search for novel treatments against bacterial infection. In recent years, the flourishing development of nanotechnology has provided new insights for exploiting promising alternative therapeutics for drug-resistant bacteria. Metallic agents have been applied in antibacterial usage for several centuries, and the functional modification of metal-based biomaterials using nanotechnology has now attracted great interest in the antibacterial field, not only for their intrinsic antibacterial nature but also for their ready on-demand functionalization and enhanced interaction with bacteria, rendering them with good potential in further translation. However, the possible toxicity of MNPs to the host cells and tissue still hinders its application, and current knowledge on their interaction with cellular pathways is not enough. This review will focus on recent advances in developing metallic nanoparticles (MNPs), including silver, gold, copper, and other metallic nanoparticles, for antibacterial applications, and their potential mechanisms of interaction with pathogenic bacteria as well as hosts.

Electroconductive Collagen-Carbon Nanodots Nanocomposite Elicits Neurite Outgrowth, Supports Neurogenic Differentiation and Accelerates Electrophysiological Maturation of Neural Progenitor Spheroids

Neuronal disorders are characterized by the loss of functional neurons and disrupted neuroanatomical connectivity, severely impacting the quality of life of patients. This study investigates a novel electroconductive nanocomposite consisting of glycine-derived carbon nanodots (GlyCNDs) incorporated into a collagen matrix and validates its beneficial physicochemical and electro-active cueing to relevant cells. To this end, this work employs mouse induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived neural progenitor (NP) spheroids. The findings reveal that the nanocomposite markedly augmented neuronal differentiation in NP spheroids and stimulate neuritogenesis. In addition, this work demonstrates that the biomaterial-driven enhancements of the cellular response ultimately contribute to the development of highly integrated and functional neural networks. Lastly, acute dizocilpine (MK-801) treatment provides new evidence for a direct interaction between collagen-bound GlyCNDs and postsynaptic N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors, thereby suggesting a potential mechanism underlying the observed cellular events. In summary, the findings establish a foundation for the development of a new nanocomposite resulting from the integration of carbon nanomaterials within a clinically approved hydrogel, toward an effective biomaterial-based strategy for addressing neuronal disorders by restoring damaged/lost neurons and supporting the reestablishment of neuroanatomical connectivity.

Enhancement of cell membrane permeability by using charged nanoparticles and a weak external electric field

Because the cell membrane is the main barrier of intracellular delivery, it is important to facilitate and control the translocation of extracellular compounds across it. Our earlier molecular dynamics simulations suggested that charged nanoparticles under a weak external electric field can enhance the permeability of the cell membrane without disrupting it. However, this membrane permeabilization approach has not been tested experimentally. This study investigated the membrane crossing of a model compound (dextran with a Mw of 3000-5000) using charged nanoparticles and a weak external electric field. A model bilayer lipid membrane was prepared by using a droplet contact method. The permeability of the membrane was evaluated using the electrophysiological technique. Even when the applied electric field was below the critical strength for membrane breakdown, dextran was able to cross the membrane without causing membrane breakdown. These results indicate that adding nanomaterials under a weak electric field may enhance the translocation of delivery compounds across the cell membrane with less damage, suggesting a new strategy for intracellular delivery systems.

Polydots, soft nanoparticles, at membrane interfaces

Soft nanoparticles (NPs) are emerging candidates for nano medicine, particularly for intercellular imaging and targeted drug delivery. Their soft nature, manifested in their dynamics, allows translocation into organisms without damaging their membranes. A crucial step towards incorporating soft dynamic NPs in nano medicine, is to resolve their interrelation with membranes. Here using atomistic molecular dynamics (MD) simulations we probe the interaction of soft NPs formed by conjugated polymers with a model membrane. These NPs, often termed polydots, are confined to their nano dimensions without any chemical tethers, forming dynamic long lived nano structures. Specifically, polydots formed by dialkyl para poly phenylene ethylene (PPE), with a varying number of carboxylate groups tethered to the alkyl chains to tune the interfacial charge of the surface of the NP are investigated at the interface with a model membrane that consists of di-palmitoyl phosphatidylcholine (DPPC). We find that even though polydots are controlled only by physical forces, they retain their NP configuration as they transcend the membrane. Regardless of their size, neutral polydots spontaneously penetrate the membrane whereas carboxylated polydots must be driven in, with a force that depends on the charge at their interface, all without significant disruption to the membrane. These fundamental results provide a means to control the position of the nanoparticles with respect to the membrane interfaces, which is key to their therapeutic use.

Converting Nanotoxicity Data to Information Using Artificial Intelligence and Simulation

Decades of nanotoxicology research have generated extensive and diverse data sets. However, data is not equal to information. The question is how to extract critical information buried in vast data streams. Here we show that artificial intelligence (AI) and molecular simulation play key roles in transforming nanotoxicity data into critical information, i.e., constructing the quantitative nanostructure (physicochemical properties)-toxicity relationships, and elucidating the toxicity-related molecular mechanisms. For AI and molecular simulation to realize their full impacts in this mission, several obstacles must be overcome. These include the paucity of high-quality nanomaterials (NMs) and standardized nanotoxicity data, the lack of model-friendly databases, the scarcity of specific and universal nanodescriptors, and the inability to simulate NMs at realistic spatial and temporal scales. This review provides a comprehensive and representative, but not exhaustive, summary of the current capability gaps and tools required to fill these formidable gaps. Specifically, we discuss the applications of AI and molecular simulation, which can address the large-scale data challenge for nanotoxicology research. The need for model-friendly nanotoxicity databases, powerful nanodescriptors, new modeling approaches, molecular mechanism analysis, and design of the next-generation NMs are also critically discussed. Finally, we provide a perspective on future trends and challenges.

CHARMM-GUI Membrane Builder: Past, Current, and Future Developments and Applications

Molecular dynamics simulations of membranes and membrane proteins serve as computational microscopes, revealing coordinated events at the membrane interface. As G protein-coupled receptors, ion channels, transporters, and membrane-bound enzymes are important drug targets, understanding their drug binding and action mechanisms in a realistic membrane becomes critical. Advances in materials science and physical chemistry further demand an atomistic understanding of lipid domains and interactions between materials and membranes. Despite a wide range of membrane simulation studies, generating a complex membrane assembly remains challenging. Here, we review the capability of CHARMM-GUI Membrane Builder in the context of emerging research demands, as well as the application examples from the CHARMM-GUI user community, including membrane biophysics, membrane protein drug-binding and dynamics, protein-lipid interactions, and nano-bio interface. We also provide our perspective on future Membrane Builder development.

Nanoparticles-mediated ion channels manipulation: From their membrane interactions to bioapplications

Ion channels are transmembrane proteins ubiquitously expressed in all cells that control various ions (e.g. Na⁺, K⁺, Ca²⁺ and Cl^- etc) crossing cellular plasma membrane, which play critical roles in physiological processes including regulating signal transduction, cell proliferation as well as excitatory cell excitation and conduction. Abnormal ion channel function is usually associated with dysfunctions and many diseases, such as neurodegenerative disorders, ophthalmic diseases, pulmonary diseases and even cancers. The precise regulation of ion channels not only helps to decipher physiological and pathological processes, but also is expected to become cutting-edge means for disease treatment. Recently, nanoparticles-mediated ion channel manipulation emerges as a highly promising way to meet the increasing requirements with respect to their simple, efficient, precise, spatiotemporally controllable and non-invasive regulation in biomedicine and other research frontiers. Thanks the advantages of their unique properties, nanoparticles can not only directly block the pore sites or kinetics of ion channels through their tiny size effect, and perturb active voltage-gated ion channel by their charged surface, but they can also act as antennas to conduct or enhance external physical stimuli to achieve spatiotemporal, precise and efficient regulation of various ion channel activities (e.g. light-, mechanical-, and temperature-gated ion channels etc). So far, nanoparticles-mediated ion channel regulation has shown potential prospects in many biomedical fields at the interfaces of neuro- and cardiovascular modulation, physiological function regeneration and tumor therapy et al. Towards such important fields, in this typical review, we specifically outline the latest studies of different types of ion channels and their activities relevant to the diseases. In addition, the different types of stimulation responsive nanoparticles, their interaction modes and targeting strategies towards the plasma membrane ion channels will be systematically summarized. More importantly, the ion channel regulatory methods mediated by functional nanoparticles and their bioapplications associated with physiological modulation and therapeutic development will be discussed. Last but not least, current challenges and future perspectives in this field will be covered as well.

Lipid Droplets in Cancer: From Composition and Role to Imaging and Therapeutics

Cancer is the second most common cause of death worldwide, having its origin in the abnormal growth of cells. Available chemotherapeutics still present major drawbacks, usually associated with high toxicity and poor distribution, with only a small fraction of drugs reaching the tumour sites. Thus, it is urgent to develop novel therapeutic strategies. Cancer cells can reprogram their lipid metabolism to sustain uncontrolled proliferation, and, therefore, accumulate a higher amount of lipid droplets (LDs). LDs are cytoplasmic organelles that store neutral lipids and are hypothesized to sequester anti-cancer drugs, leading to reduced efficacy. Thus, the increased biogenesis of LDs in neoplastic conditions makes them suitable targets for anticancer therapy and for the development of new dyes for cancer cells imaging. In recent years, cancer nanotherapeutics offered some exciting possibilities, including improvement tumour detection and eradication. In this review we summarize LDs biogenesis, structure and composition, and highlight their role in cancer theranostics.

Nanoparticle tracking analysis and statistical mixture distribution analysis to quantify nanoparticle-vesicle binding

Nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA) is a single particle tracking technique that in principle provides a more direct measure of particle size distribution compared to dynamic light scattering (DLS). Here, we demonstrate how statistical mixture distribution analysis can be used in combination with NTA to quantitatively characterize the amount and extent of particle binding in a mixture of nanomaterials. The combined approach is used to study the binding of gold nanoparticles to two types of phospholipid vesicles, those containing and lacking the model ion channel peptide gramicidin A. This model system serves as both a proof of concept for the method and a demonstration of the utility of the approach in studying nano-bio interactions. Two diffusional models (Stokes-Einstein and Kirkwood-Riseman) were compared in the determination of particle size, extent of binding, and nanoparticle:vesicle binding ratios for each vesicle type. The combination of NTA and statistical mixture distributions is shown to be a useful method for quantitative assessment of the extent of binding between particles and determination of binding ratios.

In Silico-Based Experiments on Mechanistic Interactions between Several Intestinal Permeation Enhancers with a Lipid Bilayer Model

Oral administration of drugs is generally considered convenient and patient-friendly. However, oral administration of biological drugs exhibits low oral bioavailability (BA) due to enzymatic degradation and low intestinal absorption. A possible approach to circumvent the low BA of oral peptide drugs is to coformulate the drugs with permeation enhancers (PEs). PEs have been studied since the 1960s and are molecules that enhance the absorption of hydrophilic molecules with low permeability over the gastrointestinal epithelium. In this study, we investigated the impact of six PEs on the structural properties of a model membrane using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The PEs included were the sodium salts of the medium chain fatty acids laurate, caprate, and caprylate and the caprylate derivative SNAC─all with a negative charge─and neutral caprate and neutral sucrose monolaurate. Our results indicated that the PEs, once incorporated into the membrane, could induce membrane leakiness in a concentration-dependent manner. Our simulations suggest that a PE concentration of at least 70-100 mM is needed to strongly affect transcellular permeability. The increased aggregation propensity seen for neutral PEs might provide a molecular-level mechanism for the membrane disruptions seen at higher concentrations in vivo. The ability for neutral PEs to flip-flop across the lipid bilayer is also suggestive of possible intracellular modes of action other than increasing membrane fluidity. Taken together, our results indicate that MD simulations are useful for gaining insights relevant to the design of oral dosage forms based around permeability enhancer molecules.

The role of size and nature in nanoparticle binding to a model lung membrane: an atomistic study

Understanding the uptake of nanoparticles (NPs) by different types of cellular membranes plays a pivotal role in the design of NPs for medical applications and in avoiding adverse effects that result in nanotoxicity. Yet, the role of key design parameters, such as the bare NP material, NP size and surface reactivity, and the nature of NP coatings, in membrane remodelling and uptake mechanisms is still very poorly understood, particularly towards the lower range of NP dimensions that are beyond the experimental imaging resolution. The same can be said about the role of a particular membrane composition. Here, we systematically employ biased and unbiased molecular dynamics simulations to calculate the binding energy for three bare materials (Ag/SiO₂/TiO₂) and three NP sizes (1/3/5 nm diameter) with a representative lung surfactant membrane, and to study their binding kinetics. The calculated binding energies show that irrespective of size, Ag nanoparticles bind very strongly to the bilayer, while the NPs made of SiO₂ or TiO₂ experience very low to no binding. The unbiased simulations provide insight into how the NPs and membrane affect each other in terms of the solvent-accessible surface area (SASA) of the NPs and the defect types and fluidity of the membrane. Using these systematic fine-grained results in coarsening procedures will pave the way for simulations considering NP sizes that are well beyond the membrane thickness, i.e. closer to experimental dimensions, for which different binding characteristics and more significant membrane remodelling are expected.