Cascaded photoinduced drug delivery to cells from multifunctional core-shell mesoporous silica.

Different bioactive molecules are released into living cells from lipid-covered mesoporous silica nanoparticles. The release is triggered by light, as the particles feature covalently attached photosensitizers as membrane-opening agents. It is demonstrated that the particles achieve endosomal escape and that they release their cargo into the cytosol.

Role of endosomal escape for disulfide-based drug delivery from colloidal mesoporous silica evaluated by live-cell imaging.

Redox-driven intracellular disulfide-cleavage is a promising strategy to achieve stimuli-responsive and controlled drug release. We synthesized colloidal mesoporous silica (CMS) nanoparticles with ATTO633-labeled cysteine linked to the inner particle core via disulfide-bridges and characterized their cysteine release behavior after internalization into HuH7 cells by high-resolution fluorescence microscopy. Our study revealed that endosomal escape is a bottleneck for disulfide-linkage based drug release.

Amyloid-beta-induced ion flux in artificial lipid bilayers and neuronal cells: resolving a controversy.

Understanding the pathogenicity of amyloid-beta (Abeta) peptides constitutes a major goal in research on Alzheimer's disease (AD). One hypothesis entails that Abeta peptides induce uncontrolled, neurotoxic ion flux through cellular membranes. The exact biophysical mechanism of this ion flux is, however, a subject of an ongoing controversy which has attenuated progress toward understanding the importance of Abeta-induced ion flux in AD.