Abstract
Although most nanofabrication techniques can control nano/micro particle (NMP) size over a wide range, the majority of NMPs for biomedical applications exhibits a diameter of ∼100 nm. Here, the vascular distribution of spherical particles, from 10 to 1,000 nm in diameter, is studied using intravital microscopy and computational modeling. Small NMPs (≤100 nm) are observed to move with Red Blood Cells (RBCs), presenting an uniform radial distribution and limited near-wall accumulation. Larger NMPs tend to preferentially accumulate next to the vessel walls, in a size-dependent manner (∼70% for 1,000 nm NMPs). RBC-NMP geometrical interference only is responsible for this behavior. In a capillary flow, the effective radial dispersion coefficient of 1,000 nm particles is ∼3-fold larger than Brownian diffusion. This suggests that sub-micron particles could deposit within diseased vascular districts more efficiently than conventional nanoparticles.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 2079 |
| Journal | Scientific reports |
| Volume | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 26 2013 |
Funding
PD acknowledges partial support from the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas through (grant CPRIT RP110262); the U.S. National Institutes of Health (grants U54CA143837 and U54CA151668). WKL acknowledges the support of CMMI-0856492 and CMMI-0856333 and this research used resources of the QUEST cluster at Northwestern University and the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility at Argonne National Laboratory, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-AC02-06CH11357. WKL also acknowledges the support of the World Class University Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (R33-10079). SHY acknowledges support from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (grant U54CA143837).
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General
