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Thylakoid engineered M2 macrophage for sonodynamic effect promoted cell therapy of early atherosclerosis

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Abstract

Atherosclerosis is the most common cause of cardiovascular diseases that contribute to the major morbidity worldwide, but still lacking of effective treatment strategy. Here, a hybrid cell is constructed for the sonodynamic effect promoted cell therapy of early atherosclerosis by fusing M2 macrophages with thylakoid (TK) membranes. After systemic administration, the obtained TK-M2 actively accumulates in the early atherosclerotic plaques, wherein M2 macrophages relieve the cholesterol accumulation and the inflammation in the foam cells. Meanwhile, the TK membranes decorated on the M2 macrophages exhibit both type I and type II sonodynamic effects under ultrasound (US) activation, inducing the direct apoptosis of foam cells. The cooperation of M2 and TK leads to significant outcome in eliminating atherosclerotic plaques without obvious side-effects, providing a new avenue for atherosclerosis treatment.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (No. 22025401), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21874011, and 22104005), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Nos. 2021TQ0037, and 2021M690405). The authors thank Biological & Medical Engineering Core Facilities (Beijing Institute of Technology) for providing advanced equipment. The authors thank Yun Feng from Center for Biological Imaging (CBI), Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Science for her help of analyzing confocal images.

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  1. Guanghao Wu and Changwen Mu contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Natural and Biomimetic Drugs, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chemical Biology Center, Peking University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Haiyan Xie

  2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China

    Guanghao Wu, Jiamin Qu & Yuping Dong

  3. School of Life Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China

    Changwen Mu, Qianru Zhao, Yao Lei, Ran Cheng & Weidong Nie

  4. School of Stomatology, Peking University, Beijing, 100081, China

    Ruili Yang

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  1. Guanghao Wu
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Correspondence to Ruili Yang or Haiyan Xie.

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Wu, G., Mu, C., Zhao, Q. et al. Thylakoid engineered M2 macrophage for sonodynamic effect promoted cell therapy of early atherosclerosis. Nano Res. 17, 2919–2928 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-6156-2

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