Microparticle templating as a route to nanoscale polymer vesicles with controlled size distribution for anticancer drug delivery

摘要

Graphical abstractWe report a simple and efficient strategy to produce nanoscale polymer vesicles with controllable size based on electrospraying particle and subsequent rehydration. Significantly, benefiting from the intrinsic advantages of BCP self-assembly, the polymer vesicles formed from the electrosprayed microscale particles showed uniformity in size with nanoscale dimensions. Subsequently, a drug delivery system was demonstrated using the aforementioned polymer vesicles as a carrier of DOX to achieve anticancer synergism.Display OmittedAbstractPolymer vesicles are self-assembled shells of amphiphilic block copolymers (BCPs) that have attracted tremendous interest due to their encapsulation ability and intracellular delivery of therapeutic agents. However, typical processes for the formation of polymer vesicles lead to ensembles of structures with a broad size distribution (from nanometer to micrometer scale) which result in a limitation for efficient cellular uptake. In this study, we present a simple and efficient approach for the fabrication of polymer vesicles with uniform nanoscale dimensions from template formation of electrosprayed particles in a high throughput manner. First, electrospraying was applied to produce micrometer-sized templates of a block copolymer before polymer vesicles were formed from th