Nanomaterial Interactions with Human Neutrophils.

Neutrophils are the most abundant circulating leukocyte and the first point of contact between many drug delivery formulations and human cells. Despite their prevalence and implication in a range of immune functions, little is known about how human neutrophils respond to synthetic particulates. Here, we describe how human neutrophils respond to particles which vary in both size (5 nm to 2 m) and chemistry (lipids, poly(styrene), poly(lactic--glycolic acid), and gold).

Molecular Rotors for Universal Quantitation of Nanoscale Hydrophobic Interfaces in Microplate Format.

Hydrophobic self-assembly pairs diverse chemical precursors and simple formulation processes to access a vast array of functional colloids. Exploration of this design space, however, is stymied by lack of broadly general, high-throughput colloid characterization tools. Here, we show that a narrow structural subset of fluorescent, zwitterionic molecular rotors, dialkylaminostilbazolium sulfonates [DASS] with intermediate-length alkyl tails, fills this major analytical void by quantitatively sensing hydrophobic interfaces in microplate format.

Universal process-inert encoding architecture for polymer microparticles.

Polymer microparticles with unique, decodable identities are versatile information carriers with a small footprint. Widespread incorporation into industrial processes, however, is limited by a trade-off between encoding density, scalability and decoding robustness in diverse physicochemical environments. Here, we report an encoding strategy that combines spatial patterning with rare-earth upconversion nanocrystals, single-wavelength near-infrared excitation and portable CCD (charge-coupled device)-based decoding to distinguish particles synthesized by means of flow lithography.