Method for imaging compound contained by lipid vesicle in water and examining method for the same
11371924 · 2022-06-28
Assignee
Inventors
- Yeu-Kuang Hwu (New Taipei, TW)
- Yu-Fang Hu (Taipei, TW)
- Shun-Min Yang (Taipei, TW)
- Chi-Feng Huang (Taoyuan, TW)
Cpc classification
A61K9/0019
HUMAN NECESSITIES
G01N15/1468
PHYSICS
A61K31/704
HUMAN NECESSITIES
A61K31/00
HUMAN NECESSITIES
International classification
A61K9/127
HUMAN NECESSITIES
Abstract
The present disclosure provides a method for imaging a compound contained by a lipid vesicle in water. The method comprises the following steps of: (a) providing an aqueous sample comprising the lipid vesicle which contains the compound, wherein the aqueous sample further comprises ammonium sulphate ((NH.sub.4).sub.2SO.sub.4); (b) illuminating the aqueous sample with an X-ray free-electron laser (X-FEL); (c) with an image sensor, collecting a plurality of coherent diffraction image patterns of the aqueous sample being illuminated; and (d) reconstructing the coherent diffraction image patterns with a computer such that an image of the lipid vesicle containing the compound is acquired. A method for examining a quality of a chemical drug contained by a liposome in water is also provided.
Claims
1. A method for imaging an individual nanoparticle which is a compound contained by a lipid vesicle in water, comprising: providing an aqueous sample comprising the lipid vesicle which contains the compound; illuminating the aqueous sample with an X-ray free-electron laser (X-FEL); with an image sensor, collecting a plurality of coherent diffraction image patterns of the aqueous sample being illuminated; and reconstructing the coherent diffraction image patterns with a computer such that a reconstructed image of the individual nanoparticle which is the lipid vesicle containing the compound is acquired; wherein during reconstructing the coherent diffraction image patterns with a computer, the method further comprises steps of: rotating the coherent diffraction image patterns by 180 degrees; shifting the coherent diffraction image patterns after rotation pixel-by-pixel to identify an origin; and after identifying the origin, averaging each coherent diffraction image pattern before rotation and after rotation.
2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the aqueous sample further comprises ammonium sulphate ((NH.sub.4).sub.2SO.sub.4), and the concentration of the ammonium sulphate in the aqueous sample ranges from 1 M to 6 M.
3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the lipid vesicle is a liposome or a micelle.
4. The method according to claim 3, wherein the liposome has a size ranging from 70 nm to 250 nm.
5. The method according to claim 3, wherein the concentration of the liposome in the aqueous sample ranges from 0.5 liposome/μm.sup.3 to 1 liposome/μm.sup.3.
6. The method according to claim 1, wherein the X-ray free-electron laser (X-FEL) is 3.9613 keV photon pulses.
7. The method according to claim 6, wherein the X-ray free-electron laser (X-FEL) is 425.4 μJ/pulse on an average.
8. The method according to claim 7, wherein the aqueous sample is illuminated by the X-ray free-electron laser (X-FEL) with a duration of 10.sup.−15 second and a repetition rate of 10 Hz.
9. The method according to claim 1, wherein the compound is a chemical drug.
10. The method according to claim 9, wherein the chemical drug is doxorubicin.
11. The method according to claim 1, wherein after the step of averaging, the method further comprises a step of: cropping the averaged coherent diffraction image patterns.
12. The method according to claim 11, wherein after the step of cropping, the method further comprises steps of: applying a Guided Hybrid Input-Output (GHIO) method to each coherent diffraction image pattern to obtain first preliminary reconstructions; using a Fourier transformation to exclude a missing central speckle of each first preliminary reconstruction followed by a reverse Fourier transformation to fill up missing pixels of each first preliminary reconstruction, so as to obtain second preliminary reconstructions; rotating the second preliminary reconstructions by 180 degrees and shifting the rotated second preliminary reconstructions 0.1 pixel-by-0.1 pixel to identify an origin; and after identifying the origin, averaging each second preliminary reconstruction before rotation and after rotation.
13. The method according to claim 12, wherein after the step of averaging each second preliminary reconstruction before rotation and after rotation, the method further comprises a step of: performing a final reconstruction by combining the Guided Hybrid Input-Output (GHIO) method and a Shrink wrap algorithm (SW), so as to acquire the image of the lipid vesicle containing the compound.
14. A method for examining a quality of an individual nanoparticle which is a chemical drug contained by a liposome in water, comprising: providing an aqueous sample, wherein the aqueous sample comprises the liposome, the liposome contained the chemical drug; illuminating the aqueous sample with an X-ray free-electron laser (X-FEL); with an image sensor, collecting a plurality of coherent diffraction image patterns of the aqueous sample being illuminated; reconstructing the coherent diffraction image patterns with a computer to obtain a reconstructed image of the individual nanoparticle which is the liposome contained the chemical drug; and inspecting a conformation and size of the chemical drug in the reconstructed image so as to determine the quality of the chemical drug in the aqueous sample; wherein during reconstructing the coherent diffraction image patterns with a computer, the method further comprises steps of: rotating the coherent diffraction image patterns by 180 degrees; shifting the coherent diffraction image patterns after rotation pixel-by-pixel to identify an origin; and after identifying the origin, averaging each coherent diffraction image pattern before rotation and after rotation.
15. The method according to claim 14, wherein the aqueous sample further comprises ammonium sulphate ((NH.sub.4).sub.2SO.sub.4), and the concentration of the ammonium sulphate in the aqueous sample ranges from 1 M to 6 M.
16. The method according to claim 14, wherein the liposome has a size ranging from 70 nm to 250 nm.
17. The method according to claim 14, wherein the concentration of the liposome in the aqueous sample ranges from 0.5 liposome/μm.sup.3 to 1 liposome/μm.sup.3.
18. The method according to claim 14, wherein the X-ray free-electron laser (X-FEL) is 3.9613 keV photon pulses and the aqueous sample is illuminated by the X-ray free-electron laser (X-FEL) with a duration of 10.sup.−15 second and a repetition rate of 10 Hz.
19. The method according to claim 14, wherein the chemical drug is doxorubicin.
Description
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
(1) The embodiments will become more fully understood from the detailed description and accompanying drawings, which are given for illustration only, and thus are not limitative of the present invention, and wherein:
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DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
(10) The embodiments of the invention will be apparent from the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings, wherein the same references relate to the same elements. Specific structures and function details disclosed herein are only for the illustrative purpose for describing the exemplary embodiment of this disclosure. However, this disclosure can be specifically implemented through many replacements, and should not be explained as being restricted to only the embodiment disclosed herein. Moreover, all publications mentioned or cited in this disclosure are incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each individual publication or patent specification were specifically and individually indicated to be incorporated by reference. Where a definition or use of a term in an incorporated reference is inconsistent or contrary to the definition of that term provided herein, the definition of that term provided herein applies and the definition of that term in the reference does not apply.
(11) In the description of this disclosure, it is to be understood that the terms “center”, “transversal”, “up”, “down”, “left”, “right”, “vertical”, “horizontal”, “top”, “bottom”, “inside” and “outside” indicating the orientation or position relationships are the orientation or position relationships based on the drawing, are only provided for the purposes of describing this disclosure and simplifying the description, but do not indicate or imply that the directed devices or elements must have the specific orientations or be constructed and operated in the specific orientations, and thus cannot be understood as the restriction to this disclosure. In addition, the terms “first”, and “second” are used for the illustrative purpose only and cannot be understood as indicating or implying the relative importance or implicitly specifying the number of indicated technical features. Therefore, the features restricted by “first” and “second” may expressly or implicitly comprise one or multiple ones of the features. In the description of this disclosure, unless otherwise described, the meaning of “multiple” comprises two or more than two. In addition, the terms “comprises” and any modification thereof intend to cover the non-exclusive inclusions.
(12) In the description of this disclosure, it needs to be described that, unless otherwise expressly stated and limited, the terms “mount”, “link” and/or “connect” should be construed broadly. For example, they may be referred to a fixed connection, detachable connection or connecting integrally, or they may be referred to a mechanical or an electrical connection; or, they may be referred to a direct connection or an indirect connection through an intermediate medium or an inter-communication between two elements. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the specific meanings of the above terms in this application may be understood according to the specific conditions.
(13) The terms used herein are for the purpose of describing only specific embodiments and are not intended to limit the exemplary embodiments. Unless the contexts clearly indicate otherwise, the singular form “one”, “a” and “an” used here further intend to include plural forms. It should also be understood that the terms “comprising” and/or “including” are used herein to describe the features to describe the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, units and/or elements without excluding the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, units, elements, and/or combinations thereof.
(14) Please refer to
(15) In this method, the concentration of the ammonium sulphate in the aqueous sample ranges from 1M to 6M. The concentration of the ammonium sulphate in the aqueous sample can be 1.0M, 1.5M, 2.0M, 2.5M, 3.0M, 3.5M, 4.0M, 4.5M, 5.0M, 5.5M, 6.0M, or any rational number between 1M and 6M. The lipid vesicle can be a liposome or a micelle. When the lipid vesicle is a liposome, such liposome preferably has a size ranging from 70 nm to 250 nm, which can be 70 nm, 80 nm, 90 nm, 100 nm, 110 nm, 120 nm, 130 nm, 140 nm, 150 nm, 160 nm, 170 nm, 180 nm, 190 nm, 200 nm, 210 nm, 220 nm, 230 nm, 240 nm, 250 nm, or any integral between 70 nm to 250 nm. Also, the concentration of the liposome in the aqueous sample may range from 0.5 liposome/μm.sup.3 to 1 liposome/μm.sup.3.
(16) As shown in the following experimental examples, the X-ray free-electron laser (X-FEL) used in this method can be 3.9613 keV photon pulses, 425.4 μJ/pulse on an average, with a duration of 10.sup.−15 second and a repetition rate of 10 Hz.
(17) Please refer to
(18) Please refer to
(19) Similarly, in this method, the concentration of the ammonium sulphate in the aqueous sample may ranges from 1M to 6M. The liposome may have a size ranging from 70 nm to 250 nm and the concentration of the liposome in the aqueous sample preferably ranges from 0.5 liposome/μm.sup.3 to 1 liposome/μm.sup.3. The X-ray free-electron laser (X-FEL) used here may also be 3.9613 keV photon pulses, with a duration of 10.sup.−15 second and a repetition rate of 10 Hz.
(20) The other variations or connection relationship to other elements of each detail elements of the method can refer to the previous embodiments, and they are not repeated here.
(21) To illustrate the functions and characteristics of the methods provided by the aforementioned embodiments, there are several experimental examples shown below.
(22) Experimental Examples
(23) Materials and Methods
(24) The cryo-EM was performed with a JOEL 2100fx instrument equipped with a direct detection device (DDD) 5K×4K pixels camera and a cryogenic sample holder. The specimens were prepared with a Leica EM GP instrument that rapidly froze the liposome particles in vitreous ice.
(25) CDI tests were performed at the SACLA X-FEL using 3.9613 keV photon pulses with 425.4 μJ/pulse on the average, 10 fs duration and 10 Hz repetition rate. The pulses were focused on the sample, down to 1.3×1 μm.sup.2, using a Kirkpatrick-Baez (KB) mirror system.
(26) The particle solution was placed in a micro-liquid enclosure array (MLEA) sample chip.sup.4 with 24×24 enclosures, sealed by 100 nm thick SiN membranes on the two sides. Each enclosure had a volume of 20×20×2 μm.sup.3. The MLEA was placed in the vacuum system of the SACLA Multiple Application X-ray Imaging Chamber (MAXIC) instrument..sup.33
(27) The chip position was scanned with respect to the X-ray beam so that each enclosure was hit by only one X-FEL pulse per scan. If the enclosure contained a particle, this created a diffraction pattern before being destroyed.
(28) The solution had a concentration corresponding to about 1 liposome per 1 μm.sup.3. This minimized the probability of probing more than one liposome per pulse, which would otherwise adversely affect the CDI reconstruction..sup.34,35 Note, however, that the concentration could not be too low, to avoid a large percentage of null diffraction results. We found that the above concentration was optimal, producing >50% useable diffraction patterns corresponding >100 successful reconstructions from each MLEA chip.
(29) The diffraction patterns were recorded with a MPCCD (multiport charge-coupled device) octal sensor with a total area of 2399×2399 pixels (pixel size=50×50 μm.sup.2)..sup.36 The sample-detector distance was 1.51 m.
(30) The CDI data analysis and reconstruction procedure was the following. First, since the diffraction pattern must be center-symmetric, we rotated the acquired pattern by 180 degrees and shifted the image pixel-by-pixel to find the origin by minimizing the L1 norm. After identifying the origin, we averaged the original pattern and the rotated one. Second, we cropped 471×471 and 601×601 pixels for the analyzed patterns. The corresponding estimated pixel resolutions of the reconstructed images were 20.0 nm and 15.7 nm.
(31) Third, for each pattern the GHIO method.sup.16 was applied to obtain a preliminary reconstruction. We then Fourier transformed these reconstructions excluding the missing central speckle, and used the reverse transform to fill up missing pixels. Finally, we repeated the first step but limited the image shifting to 0.1 pixels, obtaining a refined pattern. For each refined pattern, a final reconstruction by combining GHIO and the Shrink wrap algorithm (SW) was performed. A loose support was used to guarantee that no relevant signal was removed when applying the support constraint. For each iteration of the reconstruction, 16 initial random phases were generated to obtain 16 different reconstructed images. To generate a new support for the next iteration, the average of the 16 images was Gaussian-smoothed and a background was subtracted. Instead of finding a convergent support as in the conventional SW method, we forced the new support to be smaller (by <10 pixels) than the previous one.
(32) The evolution of the 16 reconstructed images was monitored over 20 iterations. The support changed from loose to over-cropped; the distribution of the 16 reconstructed images was accordingly modified from divergent to convergent, and then back to divergent. The final support was obtained when most reconstructed images were consistent. The GHIO reconstruction was then reiterated based on the final pattern and the final support. The reconstruction was terminated when the error metric stagnated.
(33) Results and Discussion
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(36) Concerning spatial resolution, for CDI it is limited by the largest detectable scattering vector, i.e., by the largest angle at which diffraction can be measured. The present experimental setup can potentially achieve 10 nm resolution with optimized conditions. However, from a small-angle-x-ray-scattering (SAXS-like) we estimate that the real resolution is about 20 nm. This, of course, is not the ultimate performance: with improved signal-to-noise levels better resolutions are feasible. Note that our time resolution (see below) was 10 fs, making factors like rotational or diffusion motions irrelevant. Other factors like aggregation of nanoparticles are ruled out by the reconstructed images, in agreement with the results from cryo-EM.
(37) To corroborate the CDI-derived particle sizes, we calculated SAXS-like curves from the diffraction patterns, by integrating over all directions the intensity for each q-value (q=momentum transfer magnitude).
(38) The results of
(39) Note that the diffraction patterns of
(40) For example, the data of this work show that the concentration of (NH.sub.4).sub.2SO.sub.4 in blank liposome is about 2M, whereas with drug rods the concentration reduced to <1M. The measurements, including those for blank liposomes, provide therefore important chemical information on the solution, specifically on the ammonium sulphate concentration in the liquid within individual drug-containing liposomes, difficult to obtain by other means. The measured reduction of ammonium sulphate concentration substantiates the incorporation of the sulphate in the rods during their formation and the subsequent depletion from the solution as previously hypothesized.
(41) Conclusions
(42) The performances of the SACLA X-FEL were sufficient to extend the technique of individual nanoparticle imaging by CDI reconstruction from highly x-ray absorbing systems to weak absorbers. The results on blank liposomes were quantitatively consistent with those of cryo-EM. Furthermore, X-FEL CDI detected doxorubicin nanorods enclosed in liposomes and measured their structural properties.
(43) The results of this work are important in view of the optimization of the industrial drug loading in liposome nanoparticles as required for official certification for human use. In more general terms, they demonstrate that X-FEL CDI can now image individual nanoparticles with nominally low diffraction cross sections, in a liquid environment and with <100 nm size—and therefore it has a significantly broader scope than suggested by previous tests.
(44) The present results are thus important by themselves, in particular since liposome nanocarriers are the most widely used ones at present and we can envision the future to other systems such as Au nanocarriers, even more so since the case of liposomes is particularly difficult with respect to other cases.
(45) Although the invention has been described with reference to specific embodiments, this description is not meant to be construed in a limiting sense. Various modifications of the disclosed embodiments, as well as alternative embodiments, will be apparent to persons skilled in the art. It is, therefore, contemplated that the appended claims will cover all modifications that fall within the true scope of the invention.
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