Green Synthesized Liquid-like Dynamic Polymer Chains with Decreased Nonspecific Adhesivity for High-Purity Capture of Circulating Tumor Cells

The capture of circulating tumor cells(CTCs)is of great significance in reducing cancer mortality and complications.However,the nonspecific binding of proteins and white blood cells(WBCs)weakens the targeting capabilities of the capture surfaces,which critically hampers the efficiency and purity of the captured CTCs.Herein,we propose a liquid-like interface design strategy that consists of liquid-like polymer chains and anti-EpCAM modification processes for high-purity and high-efficiency capture of CTCs.The dynamic flexible feature of the liquid-like chains endows the modified surfaces with excellent antiadhesion property for proteins and blood cells.The liquid-like surfaces can capture the target CTCs and show high cell viability due to the environmentfriendly surface modification processes.When liquid-like surface designs were introduced in the deterministic lateral displacement(DLD)-patterned microfluidic chip,the nonspecific adhesion rate of WBCs was reduced by more than fivefold compared to that in the DLD chip without liquid-like interface design,while maintaining comparable capture efficiency.Overall,this strategy provides a novel perspective on surface design for achieving high purity and efficient capture of CTCs.

Superior LSPR substrates based on electromagnetic decoupling for on-a-chip high-throughput label-free biosensing

Localized surface plasmon resonance(LSPR)biosensing based on supported metal nanoparticles offers unparalleled possibilities for high-end miniaturization,multiplexing and high-throughput label-free molecular interaction analysis in real time when integrated within an opto-fluidic environment.However,such LSPR-sensing devices typically contain extremely large regions of dielectric materials that are open to molecular adsorption,which must be carefully blocked to avoid compromising the device readings.To address this issue,we made the support essentially invisible to the LSPR by carefully removing the dielectric material overlapping with the localized plasmonic fields through optimized wet-etching.The resulting LSPR substrate,which consists of gold nanodisks centered on narrow SiO2 pillars,exhibits markedly reduced vulnerability to nonspecific substrate adsorption,thus allowing,in an ideal case,the implementation of thicker and more efficient passivation layers.We demonstrate that this approach is effective and fully compatible with state-of-the-art multiplexed real-time biosensing technology and thus represents the ideal substrate design for high-throughput label-free biosensing systems with minimal sample consumption.

Drug carriers based on highly protein-resistant materials for prolonged in vivo circulation time

Long-circulating drug carriers are highly desirable in drug delivery system.However,nonspecific protein adsorption leaves a great challenge in drug delivery of intravenous administration and significantly affects both the pharmacokinetic profiles of the carrier and drugs,resulting in negatively affect of therapeutic efficiency.Therefore,it is important to make surface modification of drug carriers by protein-resistant materials to prolong the blood circulation time and increase the targeted accumulation of therapeutic agents.In this review,we highlight the possible mechanism of protein resistance and recent progress of the alternative protein-resistant materials and their drug carriers,such as poly(ethylene glycol),oligo(ethylene glycol),zwitterionic materials,and red blood cells adhesion.