Light-Induced Condensation of Biofunctional Molecules around Targeted Living Cells to Accelerate Cytosolic Delivery
Ikuhiko Nakase, Moe Miyai, Kosuke Noguchi, Mamoru Tamura, Yasuyuki Yamamoto, Yushi Nishimura, Mika Omura, Kota Hayashi, Shiroh Futaki, Shiho Tokonami, Takuya Iida
Abstract
The light-induced force and convection can be enhanced by the collective effect of electrons (superradiance and red shift) in high-density metallic nanoparticles, leading to macroscopic assembly of target molecules. We here demonstrate application of the light-induced assembly for drug delivery system with enhancement of cell membrane accumulation and penetration of biofunctional molecules including cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) with superradiance-mediated photothermal convection. For induction of photothermal assembly around targeted living cells in cell culture medium, infrared continuous-wave laser light was focused onto high-density gold-particle-bound glass bottom dishes exhibiting plasmonic superradiance or thin gold-film-coated glass bottom dishes. In this system, the biofunctional molecules can be concentrated around the targeted living cells and internalized into them only by 100 s laser irradiation. Using this simple approach, we successfully achieved enhanced cytosolic release of the CPPs and apoptosis induction using a pro-apoptotic domain with a very low peptide concentration (nM level) by light-induced condensation.