Form Follows Function: Nanoparticle Shape and Its Implications for Nanomedicine

Abstract

This review is a comprehensive description of the past decade of research into understanding how the geometry and size of nanoparticles affect their interaction with biological systems: from single cells to whole organisms. Recently, there has been a great deal of effort to use both the shape and the size of nanoparticles to target specific cellular uptake mechanisms, biodistribution patterns, and pharmacokinetics. While the successes of spherical lipid-based nanoparticles have heralded marked changes in chemotherapy worldwide, the history of asbestos-induced lung disease casts a long shadow over fibrous materials to date. The impact of particle morphology is known to be intertwined with many physicochemical parameters, namely, size, elasticity, surface chemistry, and biopersistence. In this review, we first highlight some of the morphologies observed in nature as well as shapes available to us through synthetic strategies. Following this we discuss attempts to understand the cellular uptake of nanoparticles through various theoretical models before comparing this with observations from in vitro and in vivo experiments. In addition, we consider the impact of nanoparticle shape at different size regimes on targeting, cytotoxicity, and cellular mechanics.

Engineering of inorganic nanoparticles as magnetic resonance imaging contrast agents

“…The unusual shapes of these NPs could potentially dictate their interactions with single cells or whole organisms. 167 Shape-dependent relaxivity of NP-based MRI CAs has been revealed by many different groups, where shape anisotropy of magnetic NPs or shape confinement of Gd 3+ -based CAs can improve the relaxation of nearby water molecules. Employing the highly controllable shape of spherical or cubic magnetic CoFe 2 O 4 NPs, Song et al .…”

Morphology Regulation in Redox Destructible Amphiphilic Block Copolymers and Impact on Intracellular Drug Delivery

“…[5] In a large number of recent reports [6] related to various stimuli-responsive polymers and their biological applications, the focus has been mainly limited to chemical structure of the newly synthesized polymers while the impact of physical properties such as rigidity, shape, surface charge, or morphology of the polymeric nanostructures is less studied in context of important biological events such as cellular uptake, multivalent interaction, and others. [7] We envisaged a well-planned structural variation of stimuliresponsive amphiphilic polymers could be worth exploring in order to fine tune the parameters mentioned above which are related to drug delivery application. In the recent past, we have developed a methodology [8] that enables synthesis of functional poly(disulfide)s (PDS) [9a] via a condensation route with attractive features such as controllable degree of polymerization, functional group tolerance, and placement of a desired functional moiety at the chain terminals by using a suitably designed capping agent (monofunctional "impurity").…”

The 3D Design of Multifunctional Silver Nanoparticle Assemblies Embedded in Dielectrics

“…Among the latter, chemical methods are simple and inexpensive routes have been widely used for the fabrication of metal NPs such as a colloid dispersed in aqueous solution or an organic solvent obtained by the reduction of their metal salts . Different metallic salts are used to synthesize metallic spherical NPs made of gold, silver, platinum, iron, etc . Two main methods have emerged, namely the Brust–Schiffrin synthesis (BSS) and the Turkevich method .…”