Fillable Magnetic Microrobots for Drug Delivery to Cardiac Tissues In Vitro.

Journal: Advanced healthcare materials
PMID: 38748937

Abstract

Many cardiac diseases, such as arrhythmia or cardiogenic shock, cause irregular beating patterns that must be regulated to prevent disease progression toward heart failure. Treatments can include invasive surgery or high systemic drug dosages, which lack precision, localization, and control. Drug delivery systems (DDSs) that can deliver cargo to the cardiac injury site could address these unmet clinical challenges. Here, a microrobotic DDS that can be mobilized to specific sites via magnetic control is presented. This DDS incorporates an internal chamber that can protect drug cargo. Furthermore, the DDS contains a tunable thermosensitive sealing layer that gradually degrades upon exposure to body temperature, enabling prolonged drug release. Once loaded with the small molecule drug norepinephrine, this microrobotic DDS modulated beating frequency in induced pluripotent stem-cell derived cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CMs) in a dose-dependent manner, thus simulating drug delivery to cardiac cells in vitro. The DDS also navigates several maze-like structures seeded with cardiomyocytes to demonstrate precise locomotion under a rotating low-intensity magnetic field and on-site drug delivery. This work demonstrates the utility of a magnetically actuating DDS for precise, localized, and controlled drug delivery which is of interest for a myriad of future opportunities such as in treating cardiac diseases.

Authors

  • Maggie S Chen
    Department of Materials, Department of Bioengineering, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK.
  • Rujie Sun
    Department of Materials, Department of Bioengineering and Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK.
  • Richard Wang
    Department of Materials, Department of Bioengineering and Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK.
  • Yuyang Zuo
    Department of Materials, Department of Bioengineering, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK.
  • Kun Zhou
    School of Mathematics Science, Peking University, Beijing, China.
  • Junyoung Kim
  • Molly M Stevens
    Department of Materials, Department of Bioengineering, and Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, U.K.

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