A simple, robust and scalable route to prepare sub-50 nm soft PDMS nanoparticles for intracellular delivery of anticancer drugs

Sub-100 nm carriers by template polymerization for drug delivery applications

Size-controlled drug delivery systems (DDSs) have gained significant attention in the field of pharmaceutical sciences due to their potential to enhance drug efficacy, minimize side effects, and improve patient compliance. This review provides a concise overview of the preparation method, advancements, and applications of size-controlled drug delivery systems focusing on the sub-100 nm size DDSs. The importance of tailoring the size for achieving therapeutic goals is briefly mentioned. We highlight the concept of "template polymerization", a well-established method in covalent polymerization that offers precise control over molecular weight. We demonstrate the utility of this approach in crafting a monolayer of a polymer around biomolecule templates such as DNA, RNA, and protein, achieving the generation of DDSs with sizes ranging from several tens of nanometers. A few representative examples of small-size DDSs that share a conceptual similarity to "template polymerization" are also discussed. This review concludes by briefly discussing the drug release behaviors and the future prospects of "template polymerization" for the development of innovative size-controlled drug delivery systems, which promise to optimize drug delivery precision, efficacy, and safety.

PDMS nanoparticles-decorated PDMS substrate promotes adhesion, proliferation and differentiation of skin cells

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is known to be a common substrate for various cell culture-based applications. However, native PDMS is not very conducive for cell culture and hence, surface modification via cell adhesion moieties is generally needed to make it suitable especially for long-term cell culture. To address this issue, we propose to coat PDMS nanoparticles (NPs) on the surface of PDMS film to improve adhesion, proliferation and differentiation of skin cells. The proposed modification strategy introduces necessary nanotopography without altering the surface chemical properties of PDMS. Due to resemblance in the mechanical properties of PDMS with skin, PDMS NPs can recreate the native extracellular nanoenvironment of skin on the PDMS surface and provide anchoring sites for skin cells to adhere and grow. Human keratinocytes, representing 95% of the epidermal skin cells maintained their characteristic well-spread morphology with the formation of interconnected cell-sheets on this coated PDMS surface. Moreover, our in vitro immunofluorescence studies confirmed expression of distinctive epidermal protein markers on the coated surface indicating close resemblance with the native skin epidermis. Conclusively, our findings suggest that introducing nanotopography via PDMS NPs can be an effective strategy for emulating the native cellular functions of keratinocytes on PDMS based cell culture devices.