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research article

Cellular Uptake and Intracellular Trafficking of Poly(N-(2-Hydroxypropyl) Methacrylamide)

Battistella, Claudia  
•
Guiet, Romain
•
Burri, Olivier
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2019
Biomacromolecules

Cellular uptake and intracellular trafficking of polymer conjugates or polymer nanoparticles is typically monitored using fluorescence-based techniques such as confocal microscopy. While these methods have provided a wealth of insight into the internalization and trafficking of polymers and polymer nanoparticles, they require fluorescent labeling of the polymer or polymer nanoparticle. Because in biological media fluorescent dyes may degrade, be cleaved from the polymer or particle, or even change uptake and trafficking pathways, there is an interest in fluorescent label-free methods to study the interactions between cells and polymer nanomedicines. This article presents a first proof-of-concept that demonstrates the feasibility of NanoSIMS to monitor the intracellular localization of polymer conjugates. For the experiments reported here, poly(N-(2-hydroxypropyl) methacrylamide)) (PHPMA) was selected as a prototypical polymer–drug conjugate. This PHPMA polymer contained a 19F-label at the α-terminus, which was introduced in order to allow NanoSIMS analysis. Prior to the NanoSIMS experiments, the uptake and intracellular trafficking of the polymer was established using confocal microscopy and flow cytometry. These experiments not only provided detailed insight into the kinetics of these processes but were also important to select time points for the NanoSIMS analysis. For the NanoSIMS experiments, HeLa cells were investigated that had been exposed to the PHPMA polymer for a period of 4 or 15 h, which was known to lead to predominant lysosomal accumulation of the polymer. NanoSIMS analysis of resin-embedded and microtomed samples of the cells revealed a punctuated fluorine signal, which was found to colocalize with the sulfur signal that was attributed to the lysosomal compartments. The localization of the polymer in the endolysosomal compartments was confirmed by TEM analysis on the same cell samples. The results of this study illustrate the potential of NanoSIMS to study the uptake and intracellular trafficking of polymer nanomedicines.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1021/acs.biomac.8b01372
Author(s)
Battistella, Claudia  
Guiet, Romain
Burri, Olivier
Seitz, Arne  
Escrig, Stéphane  
Knott, Graham  orcid-logo
Meibom, Anders  
Klok, Harm-Anton  
Date Issued

2019

Publisher

American Chemical Society

Published in
Biomacromolecules
Volume

20

Issue

1

Start page

231

End page

242

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LP  
LGB  
Available on Infoscience
November 15, 2018
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/151458
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