Science Bulletin 62 (2017) 1283–1290

微载体对于生物医学应用，特别是对于药物递送和三维细胞培养，具有证明的价值。开发该技术的尝试倾向于将重点放在通过使用具有创新但易于使用的材料的便捷方法来制造功能微粒的过程。受日常生活中煮鸡蛋的过程的启发，该过程会导致鸡蛋蛋白质的固化，东南大学赵远锦教授课题组提出了一种新的微流体“烹饪”方法，用于生成蛋衍生的微载体，用于细胞培养和药物递送。由于在微流乳化过程中以极高的精度形成了鸡蛋乳液液滴，因此所得的鸡蛋微载体在100微米至1毫米的尺寸范围内呈现出高度单分散和均匀的形态。得益于卵蛋白组分的优异生物相容性，所获得的微载体表现出良好的细胞粘附和生长性能。此外，冷冻处理后，鸡蛋微载体显示出在整个球体中具有相互连接的多孔结构，可以吸收和负载不同种类的药物或其他活性分子，并可以用作基于微载体的递送系统。这些特征指出了微流体卵微载体在生物医学中的潜在价值。并用作基于微载体的投放系统。这些特征指出了微流体卵微载体在生物医学中的潜在价值。并用作基于微载体的投放系统。这些特征指出了微流体卵微载体在生物医学中的潜在价值。

Microcarriers have a demonstrated value for biomedical applications, in particular for drug delivery and three-dimensional cell culture. Attempts to develop this technique tend to focus on the fabrication of functional microparticles by using convenient methods with innovative but accessible materials. Inspired by the everyday process of boiling an egg, which results in the solidification of egg proteins, Professor Yuanjin Zhao’s group from Southeast University proposed a new microfluidic cooking method to generate egg-derived microcarriers for cell culture and drug delivery. As the egg emulsion droplets are formed with exquisite precision during the microfluidic emulsification, the resultant egg microcarriers present highly monodisperse and uniform morphologies at the size range of hundred microns to one millimeter. Benefiting from the excellent biocompatibility of the egg protein components, the obtained microcarriers showed good performances of cell adherence and growth. In addition, after a freezing treatment, the egg microcarriers were shown to have interconnected porous structures throughout their whole sphere, could absorb and load different kinds of drugs or other active molecules, and work as microcarrier-based delivery systems. These features point to the potential value of the microfluidic egg microcarriers in biomedicine.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scib.2017.09.006

(周小松)