August 7, 2023. Professor CHEN Wei 's team from School of Basic Medical Sciences published an online article entitled " Intestinal Villi-Inspired Mathematically Base-Layer Engineered Microneedles ( IMBEMs ) for Effective Molecular Exchange during Biomarker Enrichment and Drug Deposition in Diversified Mucosa " in the authoritative journal of materials science ' ACS Nano ' ( IF = 17.1 ). Based on the principle of bionics, this work provides a new idea for the deep interaction between bionic devices and mucosa, so that the interaction between interfaces can be strengthened through specific bionic structures without relying on material or chemical properties, so that the related concepts of this work are expected to be quickly applied to clinical practice.

The mucous membrane, also known as the ' inner skin ' of the body, is widely distributed on the surface of various organs and tissues. The surface mucus and tissue fluid contain various physiological / pathological related biomarkers. There are also abundant blood vessels and lymphatic vessels under the mucous membrane, which are potential sites for device-tissue interaction. As a barrier inside the human body, the mucosa itself is vulnerable to various external stimuli, such as swelling caused by mechanical friction ( physical damage ), ulcers caused by gastric acid or certain acid / alkali drugs ( chemical damage ). The more important is the damage of biological factors. The infection of pathogenic microorganisms to the mucosal system may cause serious harm to the body, such as novel coronavirus pneumonia ( caused by novel coronavirus infection ), atypical pneumonia ( caused by atypical virus infection ), influenza ( caused by influenza virus infection ), cervical cancer ( strongly related to human papillomavirus infection ) and gastric cancer ( strongly related to Helicobacter pylori infection ). Therefore, the development of an accurate, efficient and promising mucosal sampling / delivery strategy can not only improve the efficiency of current clinical disease diagnosis and treatment, but also better protect the lives and health of the public.

Although there are already many mucosal-related test swabs ( such as oral swabs, pharyngeal swabs, and nasal swabs ), they still face many problems in practical clinical applications, such as superficial sampling, sensitivity problems that are difficult to desorb, or patient compliance problems due to discomfort during the sampling process, or limited universality in the face of different mucosal environments. These problems reduce the accuracy of doctors ' judgment in the actual clinical diagnosis and treatment process, and bring greater risks to patients ' diagnosis and treatment.

In order to solve the above problems, many leading researchers have proposed their own solutions, such as using electrospun nano-fiber swabs or chemical modifications on samplers to improve sensitivity. However, these solutions are more or less limited in materials and functions, and it is difficult to quickly move towards clinical transformation. Professor CHEN Wei 's team from the School of Basic Medicine, Huazhong University of Science and Technology has done a lot of research on the interaction between biological bionic devices and mucosa in the past few years. They have reported new coronal test swabs ( Matter, DOI : 10.1016 / j.matt.2020.09.021 ) and dynamic omnidirectional mucosal adhesion tablet system ( ScienceAdvances, DOI : 10.1126 / sciadv.abk1792 ) that reduce false negatives.Based on the previous accumulation and inspired by the characteristics of the small intestine in the process of material exchange ( the material exchange area brought by the periodic structure of small intestinal villi is greatly improved ), the team members modified the periodic structure at the bottom of the microneedle array with less research, and developed a mathematically engineered substrate patch ( Intestinal villi-inspired Mathematically Base-Layer Engineered Microneedles, IMBEMs ). This device cleverly uses a bio-inspired structure to achieve efficient deep interaction between the mucosa and the patch. Through the design of the patch material, the IMBEMs patch has two modes of IMBEMs in deposition mode ( IMBEMs-ModeD ) and IMBEMs in enrichment mode ( IMBEMs-ModeE ), which can be applied to all kinds of mucous membranes of the whole body, sampling or delivering drugs according to demand.

Concept diagram of IMBEMs patch

In general, this work was inspired by the periodic special structure of small intestinal villi, and combined this structure with microneedle arrays to create an intestinal villi-inspired Mathematically Base-Layer Engineered Microneedles ( IMBEMs ) for efficient biomarker enrichment and rapid drug deposition of various mucosa to enhance device-mucosa interactions. The IMBEMs patch can achieve two modes of capture and delivery by controlling the material. Both modes of IMBEMs patch can display the efficiency of conventional products ( patches and swabs, etc. ). The materials used have good biocompatibility, high loading activity, high subject compliance, and relatively convenient production, so they have very high clinical transformation potential ;In addition, since it is a special surface structure independent of material or chemical properties that enhances the interaction, the structure inspired by the small intestinal villi can be applied to a variety of interfaces that need to enhance the exchange efficiency ; at the same time, IMBEMs patches can also be combined with a variety of existing medical devices ( such as endoscopy, colonoscopy, colposcopy, etc. ) to sample / deliver difficult-to-reach sites, which has broad clinical application prospects.

The related work was recently published in the authoritative journal of materials science ' ACS Nano '.GONG Yusheng, Ph.D., Department of Pharmacology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, was the first author of this paper. The author of the communication is Professor CHEN Wei from School of Basic Medicine, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and Professor CHEN Xiaoyuan from National University of Singapore. The bacterial experiment part of this work was supported by Professor Guo Yusong 's team in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of Basic Medical College.

This work is supported by the basic scientific research business fees of central universities, the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province, the National Natural Science Foundation of China Excellent Young Science Foundation ( overseas ) and other projects.

Paper link:https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.3c02944