Hui Yuan,Hsiu-Wei Cheng,Laura LE Mears,Renliang Huang,Rongxin Su,Wei Qi,Zhimin He,Markus Valtiner
Osteoarthritis is a prevalent degenerative joint disease characterized by progressive articular cartilage loss and destruction. The resultant increase in friction causes severe pain. The collagen I matrix (COL I) has been used clinically for cartilage repair; however, how COL I acts at cartilage surfaces is unclear. Here, we studied adsorption and lubrication of synovial fluid components, albumin, γ-globulin, and the phospholipid DPPC, on COL I under physiological conditions using surface plasmon resonance and an in situ sensing surface force apparatus. Our results revealed COL I had poor lubrication ability, a fairly high coefficient of friction (COF, μ = 0.651 ± 0.013), and surface damage under a 7 mN load. DPPC formed an improved lubricating layer on COL I (μ = 0.072 ± 0.016). In sharp contrast, albumin and γ-globulin exhibited poor lubrication with an order of magnitude higher COF but still provided benefits by protecting COL I from wear. Hence, DPPC on COL I may help optimize COL I implantation design.
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are recognized as potential candidates for next-generation drug delivery systems. However, the inherent cancer-targeting efficiency is unsatisfactory, necessitating surface modification to attach cell-binding ligands. By utilizing phospholipase D from Streptomyces in combination with maleimide-containing primary alcohol, the authors successfully anchored ligands onto milk-derived EVs (mEVs), overcoming the issues of ligand leakage or functional alteration seen in traditional methods. Quantitative nano-flow cytometry demonstrated that over 90% of mEVs are effectively modified with hundreds to thousands of ligands. The resulting mEV formulations exhibited remarkable long-term stability in conjugation proportion, ligand number, size distribution, and particle concentration, even after months of storage. It is further shown that conjugating transferrin onto mEVs significantly enhanced cellular uptake and induced pronounced cytotoxic effects when loaded with paclitaxel. Overall, this study presents a highly efficient, stable, cost-effective, and scalable ligand conjugation approach, offering a promising strategy for targeted drug delivery of EVs.