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Development of a new methodology to determine size differences of nanoparticles with nanoparticle tracking analysis

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Abstract

The current frontiers in Biology thus in Medicine and Pharmacy are at the nanoscale. Indeed, this is the relevant scale for extracting or synthetizing, visualizing, counting, characterizing and/or modifying nanoparticles. Nanoparticles are highly diverse including: extracellular vesicles (e.g.: exosomes), proteins, viruses and nanovectors or drug delivery systems for instance. To quantify the concentration of nano-sized objects, a growing number of size-tracking instruments is being developed. However, to date, the generated data is only used to provide a concentration measurement. The objective of this study was to determine which sizes of nanoparticles are statistically significant between 2 groups of samples. Using different samples (in silico data; calibrated beads; various biological samples), an approach that statistically compares 2 groups of samples was developed and validated. The proof of concept of the proposed approach was illustrated with applications in the field of Biology, Medicine and Pharmacy using liposomes and extracellular vesicles. For the first time to our knowledge, our results suggest that the presented approach enables comparing different groups of biological samples. It may be extended to situations such as batch 1 versus batch 2; healthy versus disease or non-treated versus treated.

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Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Code availability

Custom code might be available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

RS thanks S. de Almeida for technical assistance and discussions and A. Bourredjem for discussions.

Funding

This work was supported by the Région Bourgogne Franche-Comté PARI (grant number 9201AAO050S01716), Ligue contre le Cancer (grant number R18032MM) and Nano2Bio and FEDER (Grant Number BG0005900). No funding sources were involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, writing or in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. PEPITE EA4267, Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, 25000, Besançon, France

    Yann Pellequer

  2. Service de Néphrologie, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire, Dijon, France

    Gilbert Zanetta & Jean-Michel Rebibou

  3. Faculty of Health Sciences, Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Dijon, France

    Jean-Michel Rebibou, Fabrice Neiers & Renaud Seigneuric

  4. INCREASE, INSERM UMR1098, Fédération Hospitalo-Universitaire, Besançon, France

    Jean-Michel Rebibou

  5. Équipe NUTOX, UMR 1231 AgroSup, Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Derttech “Packtox”, INSERM, Dijon, France

    Isabelle Severin & Marie-Christine Chagnon

  6. Department of Pneumology, Faculty of Medicine, University Medical Centre, Freiburg, Germany

    Gernot Zissel

  7. Centre des Sciences du Goût et de l’Alimentation (CSGA), Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, CNRS, INRA, Dijon, France

    Fabrice Neiers

  8. UMR 1231 LNC, INSERM, Dijon, France

    Renaud Seigneuric

  9. LipSTIC LabEx, Fondation de Coopération Scientifique Bourgogne-Franche Comté, Dijon, France

    Renaud Seigneuric

  10. TranslationR, Maison Régionale de l’Innovation, Dijon, France

    Renaud Seigneuric

  11. Biomedical and Health Informatics, IBioLab, Computer Science Department, State University of New York, Metro 225, Syracuse, NY, 13202, USA

    Renaud Seigneuric

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  1. Yann Pellequer
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  2. Gilbert Zanetta
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  3. Jean-Michel Rebibou
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  4. Isabelle Severin
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  5. Marie-Christine Chagnon
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  6. Gernot Zissel
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  8. Renaud Seigneuric
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Contributions

YP, GZa, JMR, IS, MCC, GZi, FN and RS contributed to the design of experiments. YP synthetized liposomes. All authors (YP, GZa, JMR, IS, MCC, GZi, FN and RS) contributed to data analysis and manuscript preparation. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Renaud Seigneuric.

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Pellequer, Y., Zanetta, G., Rebibou, JM. et al. Development of a new methodology to determine size differences of nanoparticles with nanoparticle tracking analysis. Appl Nanosci 11, 2129–2141 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13204-021-01932-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13204-021-01932-2

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