Self-assembly of Nanoparticles and their Potential as Drug Delivery Vehicles
Authors present a rationally designed nanoparticle (NP) formulation that mimics a liposome outer bilayer but can help achieve a uniform size through a bottom up synthetic approach afforded by an inorganic NP scaffold at its core.
The proposed NP was found, through both simulations and experiments, to have a more uniform size and, as demonstrated through simulations, exhibits an enhanced stability compared with a traditional liposome. Authors hypothesize that this NP formulation can be used as a drug carrier with high efficacy. In this design, PEG polymers synthesized with one end of the PEG chain covalently linked to a lipid molecule (attached at the lipid head group) are covalently bound to the surface of an inorganic NP core. The authors demonstrate that the so-called core-polyethylene glycol-lipid shell NPs can be formed by the proposed self-assembly process through large scale molecular simulations and supported by experiments.
- Polymer Physics
- Prof. Martin Kröger
- Nanoscale 8 (2016) 14821. external page DOI:10.1039/c6nr04134e