Polyelectrolyte microcapsules and coated CaCO3 particles as fluorescence activated sensors in flowmetry

A paradigm for peptide vaccine delivery using viral epitopes encapsulated in degradable polymer hydrogel capsules

“…This method provides control over the size of the capsules (from tens of nanometres [16][17][18] to several microns [19]), allows the use of biocompatible [20] and biodegradable [20,21] polymeric building blocks, and enables the engineering of capsules to respond to temperature [22], light [23][24][25] and pH [26]. Recent reports of LbLassembled capsules have demonstrated their utility in applications ranging from drug delivery [27], targeting [28] and sensing [29,30] to the creation of microreactors [31,32] and artificial cells [33]. The success of these studies highlights the importance of the development of colloidally stable micron-to submicron-sized biodegradable capsules that can be reliably loaded with diverse therapeutics and which specifically respond to intracellular triggers to induce cargo release.…”

Synthesis and characterization of new CaCO3/poly(2-acrylamido-2-methylpropanesulfonic acid–co-acrylic acid) polymorphs, as templates for core/shell particles

“…CaCO 3 microparticles can serve as support for core-shell particles formation, by nanoengineered layer-by-layer (LbL) self-assembly, which is the self-assembly technique where multiple nano-sized layers are built up on the template using oppositely charged polyelectrolytes [24][25][26]. The greatest advantage of the LbL protocol is the striking simplicity with which the shell thickness can be tuned to nanometric precision by controlling the number of adsorbed molecular layers.…”

Interfacial Self‐Assembly of Cell‐like Filamentous Microcapsules

“…

We report herein the development of a self-assembly method to rapidly produce cell-like, filamentous microcapsules (MCs) that have high surface area and encapsulate liquids or gels. [3][4][5] There are numerous techniques available for microcapsule formation such as interfacial coacervation or interfacial polycondensation, [6] layer-by-layer (LbL) polyelectrolyte complexation and colloid-templated self-assembly, [7][8][9][10][11][12][13] emulsification with polymer phase separation, [14][15][16][17] spraydrying methods, [18][19][20] and microfluidic emulsion droplet formation. This novel method combines the spray-based production of nebulized biopolymer microdroplets [1,2] with the recently reported ultrafast self-assembly of oppositely charged, high-molecular-weight biopolymers and PAs.

…”

“…This novel method combines the spray-based production of nebulized biopolymer microdroplets [1,2] with the recently reported ultrafast self-assembly of oppositely charged, high-molecular-weight biopolymers and PAs. [3][4][5] There are numerous techniques available for microcapsule formation such as interfacial coacervation or interfacial polycondensation, [6] layer-by-layer (LbL) polyelectrolyte complexation and colloid-templated self-assembly, [7][8][9][10][11][12][13] emulsification with polymer phase separation, [14][15][16][17] spraydrying methods, [18][19][20] and microfluidic emulsion droplet formation. [21][22][23][24] The advantage of the method reported herein is the combination of a self-assembly process that leads to structural complexity with the very broad range of bioactivity offered by peptide amphiphiles.The bioactive filament-forming PAs are composed of a hydrophobic alkyl tail, and a b-sheet-forming peptide domain, followed by peptide sequences with charged amino acids or bioactive epitopes that can either bind to receptors or to specific proteins by design (Figure 1 A).…”