Speaker
Description
Quantum sensing for assessing the interaction between materials and cells
Daniel Wojtas, Aldona Mzyk, Alina Sigaeva, Yue Zhang, Yuchen Tian, Romana Schirhagl
University Medical Center Groningen
New biomaterials are developed for many applications including drug delivery, tissue engineering implants. All these materials interact with the human body and with cells and it is crucial to understand if they induce a stress response or if the delivered drug actually works. Diamond based quantum sensing is a new tool which allows measuring such stress responses with subcellular resolution. As a result, we can for instance detect where within a cell a drug delivery particle goes and how the cells react to it locally[1]. We have demonstrated this for instance with the anti-cancer drug, diazoxide, that we delivered into cancer cells and monitored the free radical generation in response to the drug.
Another example, I will show is how cells react in response to a material with sub-lethal toxicity [2,3]. In both cases, we were able to detect the free radical generation at a single cell level and pinpoint the location of the stress response.
Figure 1: Strategy for detecting free radicals in response to the drug Diazoxide. The drug is delivered with a nanodiamond particle which can also sense the free radical generation in its surrounding
[1] Tian, Y., Nusantara, A.C., Hamoh, T., Mzyk, A., Tian, X., Perona Martinez, F., Li, R., Permentier, H.P. and Schirhagl, R., 2022. Functionalized fluorescent nanodiamonds for simultaneous drug delivery and quantum sensing in HeLa cells. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 14(34), pp.39265-39273.
[2] Wojtas, D., Mzyk, A., Li, R., Zehetbauer, M., Schafler, E., Jarzębska, A., Sułkowski, B. and Schirhagl, R., 2024. Verifying the cytotoxicity of a biodegradable zinc alloy with nanodiamond sensors. Biomaterials Advances, 162, p.213927.
[3] Pouwels, S.D., Sigaeva, A., de Boer, S., Eichhorn, I.A., Koll, L., Kuipers, J., Schirhagl, R., Heijink, I.H., Burgess, J.K. and Slebos, D.J., 2023. Host–device interactions: Exposure of lung epithelial cells and fibroblasts to nickel, titanium, or nitinol affect proliferation, reactive oxygen species production, and cellular signaling. Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Medicine, 34(7), p.38.
