posted on 2021-12-01, 15:03authored byRui Huang, Ruochen Lan, Chen Shen, Zhongping Zhang, Zichen Wang, Jinying Bao, Zizheng Wang, Lanying Zhang, Wei Hu, Zhan Yu, Siquan Zhu, Lei Wang, Huai Yang
Stimuli-responsive
smart nanocarriers are an emerging class of
materials applicable in fields including drug delivery and tissue
engineering. Instead of constructing responsive polymer shells to
control the release and delivery of drugs, in this work, we put forward
a novel strategy to endow the internal drugs with light responsivity.
The microcapsule consisted of molecular motor (MM)-doped cholesteric
liquid crystals (CLCs) and drugs. The drug in gelatin-gum arabic microcapsules
can protect the carried drugs for a long time with a low release speed
totally resulting from drug diffusion. Under UV light, the MM isomerizes
and the chirality changes, inducing the alteration of the superstructure
of the CLCs. In this process, the cooperative molecular disturbance
accelerates the diffusion of the drugs from the microcapsule core
to the outside. As a result, thanks to the cooperative effect of liquid
crystalline mesogens, molecular-scale geometric changes of motors
could be amplified to the microscale disturbance of the self-organized
superstructure of the CLCs, resulting in the acceleration of the drug
release. This method is hoped to provide opportunities in the design
and fabrication of novel functional drug delivery systems.