Date: 2018-10-11
Edited by: William Mosteller
Translated by: An Siyuan
HIT News（Wang Xue/Article）Professor He Qiang, from the Micro-Nano Technology Research Center of the Institute of Basic and Interdisciplinary Sciences, has made new progress in biomedical applications of self-propelled nanomotors. Using the idea of bionic camouflage, his team constructed a light-powered nanomotor camouflaged by macrophage membranes that is able to actively seek out and recognize cancer cells, as well as successfully perforate the target cell membrane to inject external matter into the cell. The research results were published in the internationally renowned journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition (Impact Factor 12.102) under the title "Self‐Propelled Nanomotors for Thermomechanically Percolating Cell Membranes".
In recent years, research on self-propelled synthetic nanomachines has attracted wide interest from scientists all over the world because they have the ability to freely move about in the human bloodstream and perform microscale tasks, such as active drug delivery and precise tumor therapy. However, it has still been extremely challenging for a self-propelled nanomotor to quickly open a cell membrane and dispense drugs into a cell’s interior. Professor He Qiang's team, using the previous gold nanoshell modified light-driven Janus mesoporous silica nanomotor as a basis, was able to overcome the strong Brownian motion in order to accomplish this research on self-propelled movement. The "bottom-up" bionic assembly method was used to disguise the freshly isolated macrophage membrane into the mesoporous silicon portion of the Janus motor. Studies have shown that under near-infrared light, the camouflage of the macrophage membrane can effectively prevent dissociative biological blocks from adhering to the nanomotor and reduce viscous drag, thus achieving high-speed movement of the self-propelled nanomotor in the biological medium. At the same time, the immunological properties of macrophage membranes can improve the specific recognition efficiency of self-propelled nanomotors, and achieve active targeting and recognition of tumor cells. With the local thermal field generated by the self-propelled nano-shell in near-infrared light, the self-propelled nanomotor can thermomechanically perforate the tumor cell membrane, and inject extracellular substances such as drugs into the cells, resulting in the death of tumor cells. Cell-membrane camouflaged light-powered nanomotors can explore the diagnosis and provide minimally invasive treatment of tumors at the subcellular level by constructing a "nano-scalpel" and contacting the lesions at zero distance to implement precise treatment.
Original Link：https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/anie.201806759
