Blood Components Interactions to Ionic and Nonionic Glyconanogels

Abstract

Nanogels are prominent examples of “smart” nanomaterials, which are designed to incorporate biologically relevant (macro)­molecules for systemic delivery. Although these systems are carefully engineered, only a handful of studies discuss the blood compatibility of nanogels, and no systematic studies are available on how the presence of net or surface charges impacts the hemocompatibility of these nanomaterials. Therefore, in this study, temperature responsive, galactose based nanogels bearing net positive, negative, or neutral charges, either in the core or shell of nanogels, are prepared and are subsequently evaluated for their blood compatibility profiles. The nanogels containing neutral core and shell, cationic core with neutral shell, anionic core with neutral shell, neutral core with cationic shell, and neutral core with anionic shell are prepared by reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization approach. The evaluation of complement activation, blood clot formation, platelet activation, red blood cells aggregation, and hemolysis provides a detailed analysis of structure activity relationship of blood compatibility profile of these nanogels. The data reveal that the physical and biological (blood compatibility) properties can be carefully tuned by embedding the charges in the core of temperature-responsive nanomaterials, protected by neutral carbohydrate based shells