Effect of surface modification and macrophage phenotype on particle internalization.

Material properties play a key role in the cellular internalization of polymeric particles. In the present study, we have investigated the effects of material characteristics such as water contact angle, zeta potential, melting temperature, and alternative activation of complement on particle internalization for pro-inflammatory, pro-angiogenic, and naïve macrophages by using biopolymers (∼600 nm), functionalized with 13 different molecules. Understanding how material parameters influence particle internalization for different macrophage phenotypes is important for targeted delivery to specific cell populations. Here, we demonstrate that material parameters affect the alternative pathway of complement activation as well as particle internalization for different macrophage phenotypes. Here, we show that the quantitative structure-activity relationship method (QSAR) previously used to predict physiochemical properties of materials can be applied to targeting different macrophage phenotypes. These findings demonstrated that targeted drug delivery to macrophages could be achieved by exploiting material parameters.