Single particle extinction and scattering optical method unveils in real time the influence of the blood components on polymeric nanoparticles

Nanoparticles suspended in complex biological media like serum or blood, undergo significant modification due to protein corona formation (TEM images on the bottom left showing the evolution of a polystyrene nanoparticle in whole blood). Traditional optical characterization technologies, like DLS, cannot characterize this evolution due to the scattering background produced by the surrounding medium (top left DLS results). SPES optical method allows a reliable distinction of the different species present in solution and of their evolution: murine serum and blood backgrounds, PS monodisperse NPs, polydisperse PLGA NPs signals are in different regions of the two dimensional SPES plot. Analysis on the different populations can be done separately (right).119