Light‐Driven Multi‐Core/Shell Microdroplets as a Targeted Drug Delivery System

Abstract

AbstractTargeted drug delivery system (DDS) holds exciting prospects in biomedical clinical research and drug development. However, it faces a significant challenge in achieving stable and safe targeted transportation without drug leakage while obtaining precise and controllable drug dosing with a high drug utilization rate and low side effects. Herein, an optical tweezers‐based light‐driven technique is proposed to transport and construct multi‐core/shell microdroplets enveloping drug carriers and target cells as a novel, safe, and efficient targeted DDS. Drug‐loaded microdroplets with core/shell structures are first fabricated by a new and simple injection extrusion method and then it is transported to a target cell by a dynamic optical trap with a low optical power, which ensures no drug leakage, exogenous materials, and biothermal damage are introduced during the drug delivery process. Next, precise drug dosing is realized by pushing the target cell into the drug‐loaded microdroplet under the actions of optical forces, which constructs a multi‐core/shell microdroplet structure with a pure drug environment to improve the drug action efficiency. Moreover, quantitative drug dosing with a high drug utilization rate can also achieved by controlling the sizes/number of drug droplets inside the microdroplets. This light‐driven DDS is of great interest to frontier medical research and disease treatment fields.