Intracellular Delivery Enabled by Squeezing Mechanoporation
Guorui Zhang, Rong Mu, Yanfei Ma, Bin Li
Abstract
Squeeze mechanoporation, as an emerging method, plays an important role in intracellular delivery. It brings new opportunities to cutting-edge fields such as cell therapy, gene editing, and vaccine production, and it promises to revolutionize traditional drug delivery and treatment paradigms. By leveraging the viscoelastic properties of cells, this technique induces cell deformation under external force, creating transient micropores in cell membranes for the efficient and high-throughput delivery of diverse exogenous substances, such as nucleic acids, antibodies, nanomaterials, and drugs. This review comprehensively summarizes current advances in mechanical squeezing-mediated intracellular delivery, delving deeply into its fundamental principles, unique advantages, latest applications, optimization strategies, existing challenges, corresponding solutions, and future development directions. With the aim of highlighting the immense potential and promising prospects of these techniques in the field of biomanufacturing and cell therapy.