Fabrication of TiO2 micro-spikes and micro-flowers for massively parallel intracellular delivery

Treating critical diseases in recent years demand significant research on intracellular delivery in the field of medical science and cell biology. The ability to deliver external molecules into living cells with high transfection efficiency and cell viability is of great interest in cell biology for applications in therapeutic development, diagnostics, and drug delivery. In the present work, we demonstrated Titanium-di-oxide (TiO2) microstructure-based (micro-spikes (MS) and micro-flowers (MF)) photoporation platform for versatile and highly efficient intracellular delivery, which is potentially applicable for cellular therapy and diagnostics. Due to exposure of nanosecond pulse laser, transient hydrophilic membrane pores forms on the cell membrane and cargo gently deliver into cells. The best result was achieved using Propidium iodide (PI) dye with high delivery efficiency and cell viability for HCT-116 cell line.