Hyung Woo Choi†∥, Jihoon Kim†∥, Jinhwan Kim‡, Yonghwi Kim†, Hyun Beom Song§, Jeong Hun Kim§, Kimoon Kim†‡, and Won Jong Kim*†‡
† Center for Self-assembly and Complexity, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Pohang 37673, Republic of Korea
‡ Department of Chemistry, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang 37673, Republic of Korea
§ Department of Biomedical Sciences, Seoul National University Graduate School, Seoul 03080, Republic of Korea
∥Author Contributions
H. W. Choi and J. Kim contributed equally to this work.
*Corresponding Author
Abstract
We report herein the design of a light-responsive gatekeeper for smart nitric oxide (NO) delivery. The gatekeeper is composed of a pH-jump reagent as an intermediary of stimulus and a calcium phosphate (CaP) coating as a shielding layer for NO release. The light irradiation and subsequent acid generation are used as triggers for uncapping the gatekeeper and releasing NO. The acids generated from a light-activated pH-jump agent loaded in the mesoporous nanoparticles accelerated the degradation of the CaP-coating layers on the nanoparticles, facilitating the light-responsive NO release from diazeniumdiolate by exposing a NO donor to physiological conditions. Using the combination of the pH-jump reagent and CaP coating, we successfully developed a light-responsive gatekeeper system for spatiotemporal-controlled NO delivery.
Keywords: nitric oxide delivery; calcium phosphate; pH-jump reagent; gatekeeper; corneal wound healing