Boston Ivy-Inspired Disc-Like Adhesive Microparticles for Drug Delivery

Microparticles with strong adherence are expected as efficient drug delivery vehicles. Herein, we presented an ingenious hydrogel microparticle recapitulating the adhesion mechanism of Boston ivy tendrils adhesive discs (AD) for durable drug delivery. The particles were achieved by replicating a silica colloidal crystal aggregates assembled in a droplet template after rapid solvent extraction. Due to their unique shape, the nanostructure, and the sticky hydrogel component, such novel microparticles exhibited prominent adhesive property to the wet tissue environment. It was demonstrated that the bioinspired microcarriers loading with dexamethasone had a good therapeutic effect for ulcerative colitis due to the strong adhesion ability for prolonging the maintenance of drug availability. These virtues make the biomimetic microparticles potentially ideal for many practical clinical applications, such as drug delivery, bioimaging, and biodiagnostics.

Hydrogel Microparticles Functionalized with Engineered Escherichia coli as Living Lactam Biosensors

Recently there has been an increasing need for synthesizing valued chemicals through biorefineries. Lactams are an essential family of commodity chemicals widely used in the nylon industry with annual production of millions of tons. The bio-production of lactams can substantially benefit from high-throughput lactam sensing strategies for lactam producer screening. We present here a robust and living lactam biosensor that is directly compatible with high-throughput analytical means. The biosensor is a hydrogel microparticle encapsulating living microcolonies of engineered lactam-responsive Escherichia coli. The microparticles feature facile and ultra-high throughput manufacturing of up to 10,000,000 per hour through droplet microfluidics. We show that the biosensors can specifically detect major lactam species in a dose-dependent manner, which can be quantified using flow cytometry. The biosensor could potentially be used for high-throughput metabolic engineering of lactam biosynthesis.

Linker-free antibody conjugation for sensitive hydrogel microparticle-based multiplex immunoassay

Graphically encoded hydrogel microparticles were directly conjugated with reduced antibodies without linkers for highly sensitive multiplex immunoassay.