Research

Wrapping of ellipsoidal nano-particles by fluid membranes

Sabyasachi Dasgupta, Thorsten Autha, Gerhard Gompper

Soft Matter, 9, 5473-5482 (2013)

Membrane budding and wrapping of particles, such as viruses and nano-particles, play a key role in intracellular transport and have been studied for a variety of biological and soft matter systems. We study nano-particle wrapping by numerical minimization of bending, surface tension, and adhesion energies. We […]

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Size- and coating-dependent uptake of polymer-coated gold nanoparticles in primary human dermal microvascular endothelial cells

Christian Freese, Matthew I. Gibso, Harm-Anton Klok, Ronald E. Unger, C. James Kirkpatrick

Biomacromolecules, 13 (5), pp 1533–1543 (2012)

A library-orientated approach is used to gain understanding of the interactions of well-defined nanoparticles with primary human endothelial cells, which are a key component of the vasculature. Fifteen sequentially modified gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) based on three different core […]

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Interactions of silica nanoparticles with lung epithelial cells and the association to flotillins

Jennifer Kasper, Maria I. Hermanns, Christoph Bantz, Olga Koshkina, Thomas Lang, Michael Maskos, Christine Pohl, Ronald E. Unger, C. James Kirkpatrick

Arch. Toxicol., 6 (2012)

Amorphous silica nanoparticles (aSNPs) gain increasing popularity for industrial and therapeutic claims. The lung with its surface area of 100–140 m2 displays an ideal target for therapeutic approaches, but it represents also […]

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Uptake and cytotoxicity of citrate-coated gold nanospheres: Comparative studies on human endothelial and epithelial cells

Christian Freese, Chiara Uboldi, Matthew I Gibson, Ronald E Unger, Babette B Weksler, Ignacio A Romero, Pierre-Olivier Couraud, C J Kirkpatrick

Part Fibre Toxicol., 9, 23 (2012)

BACKGROUND:
The use of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) for diagnostic applications and for drug and gene-delivery is currently under intensive investigation. For such applications, biocompatibility and the absence of cytotoxicity of AuNPs […]

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Diblock copolymer–selective nanoparticle mixtures in the lamellar phase confined between two parallel walls: a mean field model

Lenin S. Shagolsem, Jens-Uwe Sommer
Soft Matter, 8, 11328-11335 (2012)
We present a mean field model for a mixture of AB diblock-copolymers and A-block selective nanoparticles confined between two identical non-selective walls. A horizontally symmetric lamellar structure of the nanocomposite is considered where nanoparticles are allowed to segregate between the polymer–wall interfaces. For a fixed value of […]

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Nanoparticle-Induced Permeability of Lipid Membranes

Sergey Pogodin, Marco Werner, Jens-Uwe Sommer, Vladimir A. Baulin

ACS Nano, DOI: 10.1021/nn3028858 (2012)

Monte Carlo simulations using the bond fluctuation method with explicit solvent reveal the mechanism of enhanced permeability of lipid bilayers induced by the adsorption of nanoparticles with controlled hydrophobicity. Simulation results indicate an adsorption transition of nanoparticles on the bilayer in a […]

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