4.2 Article

Self-Assembly of Crystalline Vesicles from Nonplanar pi-Conjugated Nanocycles

Journal

CCS CHEMISTRY
Volume 3, Issue 7, Pages 1851-1861

Publisher

CHINESE CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.31635/ccschem.020.202000373

Keywords

cycloparaphenylene; vesicle; crystallization; cell internalization; supramolecule

Funding

  1. Natural Science Foundation of China [51690153, 21720102005]
  2. National Key R&D Program of China [2017YFA0701301, 2017YFA0205401]
  3. Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University

Ask authors/readers for more resources

This study demonstrates that nonplanar pi-conjugated nanocycles can self-assemble into crystalline vesicles, with the size of vesicles being adjustable in solution. The vesicles show a remarkable ability to enter cells and kill cancer cells, making them potential candidates for effective anti-tumor agents.
There is a great demand for self-assembled carbon nanomaterials because of their importance in optoelectronics, biomaterials, and so forth. Herein, we report a novel type of self-assembled, nanoscale, crystalline vesicle from nonplanar pi-conjugated nanocycles. We designed four different structural [8]cycloparaphenylenes ([8]CPPs) molecules and demonstrated that these nonplanar pi-conjugated CPP nanocycles could self-assemble into multilamellar, crystalline vesicles in tetrahydrofuran (THF)/H2O mixed solvent. The critical driving force for the assembly of nanoscale CPP vesicles is crystallization and pi-pi interaction of nonplanar, nanocyclic molecules. The size of CPP vesicles could be regulated by changing water content, temperature, and concentration in solution. Our data demonstrate that these pi-conjugated nanocycle-based vesicles show a remarkable ability to enter cells in an energy- or temperature-independent manner and kill cancer cells. When the side groups of the CPP molecule were changed, the CPP vesicles showed a large difference in the cytotoxicity, and two CPP vesicles could effectively kill cancer cells as well as first-class antitumor agents.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.2
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available