today’s cyclodextrin:
Core–shell superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles hold great promise as a theranostic platform in biological systems. Antonino Puglisi and coworkers report the biological effect of multifunctional cyclodextrin-appended SPIONs (CySPION) in mutant Npc1-deficient CHO cells compared to their wild-type counterparts. CySPIONs show negligible cytotoxicity while they are strongly endocytosed and localized in the lysosomal compartment. Through their bespoke pH-sensitive chemistry, these nanoparticles release appended monomeric cyclodextrins to mobilize over-accumulated cholesterol and eject it outside the cells. CySPIONs show a high rate of transport across blood–brain barrier models, indicating their promise as a therapeutic approach for cholesterol-impaired diseases affecting the brain.

University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU)Peter van OostrumErik Reimhult
Università degli Studi di CataniaNoemi BognanniGraziella Vecchio
Ege University: Ece Bayir
University of Oxford: Dawn Shepherd, Frances Platt

See the full article here: Grafting of Cyclodextrin to Theranostic Nanoparticles Improves Blood-Brain Barrier Model Crossing

Confocal micrographs of Npc1-deficient CHO after incubation with 0.1 mg/mL FITC-CySPION for 72 h showing co-localization, with Pearson’s coefficient of 0.37, between FITC-CySPION (green) and LysoTracker Deep Red within the lysosomal compartments (red) within the ROI preproduced on the right. The used excitation wavelengths and fluorescence maxima are indicated in the figures. The field of view is 290 × 290 µm2.