Superhydrophobic Array Devices for the Enhanced Formation of 3D Cancer Models.

During the metastatic cascade, cancer cells travel through the bloodstream as circulating tumor cells (CTCs) to a secondary site. Clustered CTCs have greater shear stress and treatment resistance, yet their biology remains poorly understood. We therefore engineered a tunable superhydrophobic array device (SHArD).

Dual Affinity Nanoparticles for the Transport of Therapeutics from Carrier Cells to Target Cells under Physiological Flow Conditions.

In this study, a novel two-stage nanoparticle delivery platform was developed based on the dual functionalization of a liposome with moieties that have fundamentally different strengths of adhesion and binding kinetics. The essential concept of this system is that the nanoparticles are designed to loosely bind to the carrier cell until they come into contact with the target cell, to which they bind with greater strength. This allows the nanoparticle to be transferred from one cell to another, circulating for longer periods of time in the blood and delivering the therapeutic agent to the target circulating tumor cell.