Journal article

Analysing intracellular deformation of polymer capsules using structured illumination microscopy

Xi Chen, Jiwei Cui, Huanli Sun, Markus Mullner, Yan Yan, Ka Fung Noi, Yuan Ping, Frank Caruso

NANOSCALE | ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY | Published : 2016

Abstract

Understanding the behaviour of therapeutic carriers is important in elucidating their mechanism of action and how they are processed inside cells. Herein we examine the intracellular deformation of layer-by-layer assembled polymer capsules using super-resolution structured illumination microscopy (SIM). Spherical- and cylindrical-shaped capsules were studied in three different cell lines, namely HeLa (human epithelial cell line), RAW264.7 (mouse macrophage cell line) and differentiated THP-1 (human monocyte-derived macrophage cell line). We observed that the deformation of capsules was dependent on cell line, but independent of capsule shape. This suggests that the mechanical forces, which i..

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Convergent Bio-Nano Science and Technology


Awarded by ARC


Awarded by Australian Research Council


Funding Acknowledgements

This research was conducted and funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Convergent Bio-Nano Science and Technology (project number CE140100036). This work was also supported by the ARC under the Australian Laureate Fellowship (F. C., FL120100030), the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (Y. Y., DE130100488), and the Super Science Fellowship (F. C., FS110200025) schemes. We thank Dr Christina Cortez-Jugo (the University of Melbourne) and Benjamin Hibbs (the Materials Characterisation and Fabrication Platform) for helpful discussions. M. M. thanks the University of Melbourne for support through a McKenzie Fellowship. This work was performed in part at the Materials Characterisation and Fabrication Platform (MCFP) at the University of Melbourne and the Victorian Node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF).