TY - JOUR
T1 - Dielectrophoretic separation of randomly shaped protein particles
AU - Kwak, Tae Joon
AU - Jung, Huihun
AU - Allen, Benjamin D.
AU - Demirel, Melik C.
AU - Chang, Woo Jin
N1 - Funding Information:
We acknowledge the use of instrumentation at the Advanced Analysis Facility of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The authors also acknowledge Georgije Stanisic’s data analysis help. The authors are also grateful for the Distinguished Graduate Student Fellowship and Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship provided to T.J.K. by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. MCD, HJ, BA are funded by the Army Research Office (grant no. W911NF-16-1-0019 and W911NF-18-1-0261) as well as Huck Endowment of Pennsylvania State University.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2021/5/1
Y1 - 2021/5/1
N2 - Recently, insoluble protein particles have been increasingly investigated for artificial drug delivery systems due to their favorable properties, including programmability for active drug targeting of diseases as well as their biocompatibility and biodegradability after administration. One of the biggest challenges is selectively collecting desirable self-repairable particles in the spherical morphology with monodispersity to enable consistent levels and rates of drug loading and release. Therefore, technology that allows sorting of protein particles with respect to size and morphology will enhance the design and production of next-generation drug delivery materials. Here, we introduce a dielectrophoretic (DEP) separation technique to selectively isolate spherical protein particles from a mixture of randomly shaped particles. We tested this approach by applying it to a mixture of precipitated squid ring teeth inspired tandem repeat protein particles with diverse sizes and morphologies. The DEP trapping system enabled us to isolate specific-sized, spherical protein particles out of this mixture: after separation, the fraction of 2 µm and 4 µm spherical particles was increased from 28.64% of mixture to 80.53% and 74.02% with polydispersity indexes (PDIs) decreased from 0.93 of mixture to 0.19 and 0.09, respectively. The protein particles show high aqueous swelling capability (up to 74% by mass) that could enable delivery of drug solutions. This work is intended to inspire the future development of biocompatible drug-delivery systems.
AB - Recently, insoluble protein particles have been increasingly investigated for artificial drug delivery systems due to their favorable properties, including programmability for active drug targeting of diseases as well as their biocompatibility and biodegradability after administration. One of the biggest challenges is selectively collecting desirable self-repairable particles in the spherical morphology with monodispersity to enable consistent levels and rates of drug loading and release. Therefore, technology that allows sorting of protein particles with respect to size and morphology will enhance the design and production of next-generation drug delivery materials. Here, we introduce a dielectrophoretic (DEP) separation technique to selectively isolate spherical protein particles from a mixture of randomly shaped particles. We tested this approach by applying it to a mixture of precipitated squid ring teeth inspired tandem repeat protein particles with diverse sizes and morphologies. The DEP trapping system enabled us to isolate specific-sized, spherical protein particles out of this mixture: after separation, the fraction of 2 µm and 4 µm spherical particles was increased from 28.64% of mixture to 80.53% and 74.02% with polydispersity indexes (PDIs) decreased from 0.93 of mixture to 0.19 and 0.09, respectively. The protein particles show high aqueous swelling capability (up to 74% by mass) that could enable delivery of drug solutions. This work is intended to inspire the future development of biocompatible drug-delivery systems.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.seppur.2020.118280
DO - 10.1016/j.seppur.2020.118280
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85099610249
VL - 262
JO - Gas Separation and Purification
JF - Gas Separation and Purification
SN - 1383-5866
M1 - 118280
ER -