Nanotopography boosts cellular uptake by inducing macropinocytosis

Abstract Efficient cellular uptake of biomolecules, including genetic material, mRNA, proteins, and nanoparticles, requires novel approaches to overcome inherent cellular barriers. This study investigates how nanotopographical cues from nanoporous surfaces impact the uptake efficiency of diverse molecules by cells. The results demonstrate that cellular uptake efficiency increases significantly on nanoporous surfaces compared to flat surfaces. Notably, this process is found to be dependent on the size and morphology of the nanopores, reaching its peak efficacy with blind pores of 400 nm in size. Enhanced genetic transduction on nanoporous surfaces were observed for multiple vectors, including lentiviruses, baculoviruses, and mRNA molecules. The versatile nature of this approach allows co-transfection of cells with multiple mRNA vectors. Moreover, the nanoporous platform was used for efficient and fast manufacturing of CAR-T cells through lentiviral transduction. Furthermore, we pinpoint macropinocytosis as the predominant mechanism driving increased cellular uptake induced by the nanoporous surfaces. The method introduced here for enhancing genetic transduction of cells has applications in immunotherapy research, drug delivery, and cell engineering.