Magnetically Controlled Cell Robots with Immune-Enhancing Potential

Abstract

Magnetic microrobots exhibit enormous potential in targeted drug delivery owing to the remote wireless manipulation and minimum invasion for medical treatment. High degree of freedom offers the magnetic propelled robots extraordinary application prospect since they can be controlled precisely when different magnetic fields sources working cooperatively. However, the biocompatibility of microrobots have attracted sustained and general concern. Therefore, it is highly necessary to develop a promising carrier with high biocompatibility and investigate the mechanism of drug loading-release triggered by special microenvironment in the targeted region. In this paper, we proposed a magnetically controlled cell robots (MCRs) based on macrophages propelled by a rotating magnetic field. The innovative MCRs exhibit good biocompatibility and low toxicity by optimizing the concentration of polylysine-coated Fe nanoparticles (PLL@FeNPs) to 40 µg/mL. These MCRs loaded with murine interleukin-12 (IL-12), murine chemokine (C-C motif) ligand 5 (CCL-5), and murine C-X-C motif chemokine ligand 10 (CXCL-10) which can stimulate T cell differentiation and recruitment of monocytes, respectively. The macrophages showed an obvious M1-polarization tendency of macrophages to phagocytose intracellular pathogens and resist the growth of tumor cells. Under the control of a magnetic propelling system composed of 3 pairs of Helmholtz coil, the cell robot can be propelled wirelessly and moved along a predefined path with high accuracy. Moreover, the MCRs could approach to cancer cells and stop at places of interest in vitro. In conclusion, we have accomplished the preliminary construction of a targeted drug delivery system which displays great immune-enhancing potential for targeted drug delivery.