Speaker
Description
Medical drug delivery is a rapidly developing field, including a wide range of nanocarrier used to increase the drug's amount in the target cells and decrease its potential side effects. However,a precise targetting of the delivery to other organs than liver remains a challenge. A novel polymer-based i-Bind nanocarrier has been shown to hitchhike on blood cells, with different affinities to red and white blood cells.
All atom molecular dynamics simulations have been used to compare the red and white blood cell model membranes and their interactions with the carrier nanoparticle polymer and its i-Bind coating.
The i-Bind coating interacted with both membranes in a non-specific manner, with a preference for hydrogen bonds with the phospholipid phosphate groups in both studied membrane models. However, i-Bind coating showed preferential binding to the white blood cell membrane. This is in contrast with experimentally measured data, suggesting that i-Bind-lipid interactions are not the most significant contribution to the overall behaviour, and that blood cell surface proteins and the total number of each cells in blood must also be taken into account.