Jiali (Maggie) Zhai- PhD; MBA
- Research Associate at RMIT University
Jiali (Maggie) Zhai
- PhD; MBA
- Research Associate at RMIT University
About
70
Publications
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Introduction
Current institution
Publications
Publications (70)
Next generation drug delivery utilising nanoparticles incorporates active targeting to specific sites. In this work, we combined targeting with the inherent advantages of self-assembled lipid nanoparticles containing internal nanostructures. Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-targeting, PEGylated lipid nanoparticles using phytantriol and 1,2-d...
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a common form of dementia, which is characterized by the presence of extracellular amyloid plaques comprising the amyloid β peptide (Aβ). Although the mechanism underlying AD pathogenesis remains elusive, accumulating evidence suggests that the process of amyloid fibril formation is a surface-mediated event, which plays...
Lipid liquid crystalline nanoparticles such as cubosomes and hexosomes have unique internal nanostructures that have shown great potential in drug and nutrient delivery applications. The triblock copolymer, Pluronic F127, is usually employed as a steric stabilizer in dispersions of lipid nanostructured particles. In this study, we investigated the...
Our custom copolymers enable tunable, pH- and concentration-dependent mesophase transitions in LNPs, offering enhanced control for targeted drug release.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses a global health crisis demanding innovative solutions. Traditional antibiotics, though pivotal over the past century in combating bacterial infections, face diminished efficacy against evolving bacterial defense mechanisms, especially in Gram‐negative strains. This study explores self‐assembled ionizable lipid n...
Macrophages are unique immune cells attracting growing attention as a potential candidate for cell‐based therapy for infectious diseases and cancer. Strategies that can reprogramme or gene‐edit macrophages hold potential across a spectrum of acute and chronic conditions. Herein, lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) are developed containing the ionizable lipi...
The blood‐brain barrier (BBB) poses a significant challenge in delivering therapeutic agents for brain diseases due to its high selectivity against foreign substances. This limitation greatly hampers the effectiveness of conventional chemotherapeutic drugs in treating brain cancers. In response, lipid‐based nanoparticles (LNPs) have emerged as a pr...
Self‐assembled lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), serving as essential nanocarriers in recent COVID‐19 mRNA vaccines, provide a stable and versatile platform for delivering a wide range of biological materials. Notably, LNPs with unique inverse mesostructures, such as cubosomes and hexosomes, are recognized as fusogenic nanocarriers in the drug delivery f...
Synthetic polymer nanodiscs are self-assembled structures formed from amphipathic copolymers encapsulating membrane proteins and surrounding phospholipids into water soluble discs. These nanostructures have served as an analytical tool for the...
Ionisable amino‐lipid is a key component in lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), which plays a crucial role in the encapsulation of RNA molecules, allowing efficient cellular uptake and then releasing RNA from acidic endosomes. Herein, we present direct evidence for the remarkable structural transitions, with decreasing membrane curvature, including from in...
Ionisable amino‐lipid is a key component in lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), which plays a crucial role in the encapsulation of RNA molecules, allowing efficient cellular uptake and then releasing RNA from acidic endosomes. Herein, we present direct evidence for the remarkable structural transitions, with decreasing membrane curvature, including from in...
Globular proteins are well-folded model proteins, where ions can substantially influence their structure and aggregation. Ionic liquids (ILs) are salts in the liquid state with versatile ion combinations. Understanding the IL effect on protein behavior remains a major challenge. Here, we employed small angle X-ray scattering to investigate the effe...
Biomimetic cubic phases can be used for protein encapsulation in a variety of applications such as biosensors and drug delivery. Cubic phases with a high concentration of cholesterol and phospholipids were obtained herein. It is shown that the cubic phase structure can be maintained with a higher concentration of biomimetic membrane additives than...
Responsive nanoparticle delivery systems hold great potential for next-generation chemotherapeutic treatment with reduced off-target side effects. In this work, we formulated responsive lipid-based cubosomes loaded with paclitaxel (PTX) as a model drug and stabilised by novel amphiphilic block copolymers (ABCs) containing the pH-responsive poly(2-(...
Interest in lipid-based lyotropic liquid crystalline nanoparticles (LCNPs) as drug delivery vehicles continues to grow, owing to their unique structural features. The structure of these particles can be controlled to suit specific applications, through tailoring the lipid composition and solvent conditions. Ionic liquids (ILs) are liquid salts comp...
Hypothesis:
Non-lamellar lyotropic liquid crystal nanoparticles (LLCNPs) are gaining significant interest in the fields of drug delivery and nanomedicine. Traditional, top-down formulation strategies for LLCNPs are typically low-throughput, can lack controllability and reproducibility in the particle size distribution, and may be unsuitable for lo...
Carbon nanodots (C-dots) have attracted much attention for their use in the fields of bioimaging, drug delivery, and sensing due to their excellent fluorescent and photoluminescent properties, photostability, biocompatibility, and amenability to surface modification. Herein, we report a nanocomposite formulation of C-dots (<5 nm) encapsulated in li...
pH-responsive nanoparticles enable the selective delivery of a chemotherapeutic agent to tumours while reducing adverse effects. Herein we synthesised four novel aminolipids and developed pH-responsive nanostructured lipid nanoparticles (LNP), which exhibited a slow-releasing hexagonal structure (H2) at physiological pH and quick release bicontinuo...
In this study, the hybrid liposomes composed of lecithin and the hydrophilic emulsifiers including Tween 80 and decaglycerol monolaurate were prepared, and their curcumin loading performance were investigated. Results showed that the fusion of hydrophilic emulsifiers into lecithin membrane formed a new liposome-micelle-hybrid (LMH) structure whereb...
BACKGROUND
Oleogels represent one of the most important carriers for the delivery of lipophilic nutraceuticals. Phytosterols (PS), plant‐derived natural sterol compounds, are preferred for oleogel preparation due to their self‐assembly properties and health function. However, the relationship between the physical properties of PS‐based oleogels and...
Cryptococcus neoformans is a yeast-like fungus that can cause the life-threatening disease cryptococcal meningitis. Numerous reports have shown increased resistance of this fungus against antifungal treatments, such as fluconazole (Fluc), contributing to an 80% global mortality rate. This work presents a novel approach to improve the delivery of th...
Polymer assemblies with photoluminescent properties are of increasing interest for biomedical applications, ranging from biosensing and bioimaging to biotracking. However, the preparation of these nano/micro-objects often requires multistep polymer synthesis and a tedious self-assembly process. Herein, we demonstrate the preparation of photolumines...
Lipid nanoparticles, such as liposomes, cubosomes, hexosomes, solid lipid nanoparticles and nanostructured lipid carriers, have grown in popularity in many biomedical applications including vaccine and nanomedicine development in the last few years. These systems generally require steric stabilizers to maintain colloidal stability in an aqueous med...
The use of biocompatible ionic liquids (bio-ILs) as a “green” solvent with uniquely tunable cations and anions, specific selectivity, and many other desirable physicochemical properties in biocatalysis has shown great promises to address many challenges. A plethora of studies have demonstrated ILs possess a range of exceptional capabilities in coor...
Hypothesis
Cubosomes are promising delivery vehicles for a wide range of drugs and biomolecules. Polymers such as the polyethylene glycol (PEG)-based Pluronic F-127 have been widely used for dispersing and stabilising lipid cubosomes. However, due to the PEG-immunogenicity, and pre-existing anti-PEG antibodies in some individuals, the efficacy of P...
Membrane-mediated assembly has been well characterised for toxic amyloid species such as the amyloid-β peptide implicated in Alzheimer's disease. However, little is known about the membrane-mediated assembly of functional-amyloid forming peptides, recently identified as a natural storage state for neuropeptide hormones in vivo. Here, we study the a...
BACKGROUND
Egg yolk granules (EYGs)‐soy lecithin (SL) complex is a newly developed delivery system that is effective for improving the storage stability of hydrophobic bioactive compounds. However, the formation mechanism of EYGs and SL complex and its effect on the gastrointestinal fate of lutein‐loaded emulsions needs to be investigated further....
Solvents play a crucial role in protein instability and aggregation, which are undesirable in biomedical applications. The development of quantitative, high throughput methods of evaluating protein aggregation is important in the search of novel solvent mixtures/systems, such as ionic liquids (ILs). In this study, three different small-angle X-ray...
Hypothesis
Cubosomes made from the inverse micellar cubic mesophase (I2) with Fd3m symmetry possess a unique structure of closely packed inverse micelles. These have prospective functionality in sustained drug release. In this study, we hypothesised that similar to fatty acids, various fatty acetate compounds can induce the formation of micellar Fd...
Non-lamellar lyotropic liquid crystalline (LLC) lipid nanoparticles contain internal multidimensional nanostructures such as the inverse bicontinuous cubic and the inverse hexagonal mesophases, which can respond to external stimuli and have the potential of controlling drug release. To date, the internal LLC mesophase responsiveness of these lipid...
The development of nutrient and bioactive delivery vehicles has become a burgeoning field with the worldwide growing demand for healthy foods and supplements. Food-grade protein particles have attracted significant attention for their great potentials in fabricating nutrient delivery vehicles. This review aims to summarize a wide range of food-grad...
Background
Hen egg yolk (EY) has a variety of techno-functionalities, including emulsifying, gelling, and film-forming properties. However, the application of native EY and its fractions is still limited due to the insufficient functionalities. Thus, various modification treatments have been used to improve the functionalities. In addition, there h...
This study reported a powder formulation containing omega-3-rich algal oil emulsions stabilized by egg yolk granules (EYGs)/lecithin composites. The improved physical stability of the algal oil samples due to increasing pH and lecithin addition was beneficial to the oxidative stability through analysis of free radical scavenging activities, metal i...
Individual and synergistic effects of sodium chloride (NaCl) and sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP) on the physicochemical of and gelling properties of highly diluted liquid whole were studied. Results showed that NaCl and STPP acted differently whereby NaCl addition increased the surface hydrophobicity of the egg proteins and STPP addition increased t...
We herein report a facile strategy to prepare triggered degradable block copolymer nano/macro-objects, ranging from typical micelles, worms, jellyfish, and vesicles to rarely achieved spongosomes, cubosomes, and hexosomes via RAFT-mediated polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA). The morphological transitions from a simple spherical micelle to...
The effect of ascorbyl palmitate (AP) on the physical stability of soy phosphatidylcholine (SPC) liposomes and the retention rate of curcumin loaded into SPC liposomes enriched with different concentrations of AP was studied. Results showed that the transmittance, stability coefficient and particle size of liposomes were all influenced by the addit...
We herein report 13 protic ionic liquids (PILs) as tunable solvation media to regulate the internal lyotropic liquid crystalline mesophase of monoolein-based nanoparticles. A range of nanostructures, including inverse bicontinuous cubic, inverse hexagonal, and sponge/lamellar mesophases, were produced and verified by synchrotron small-angle X-ray s...
A prospective class of materials for drug delivery is lyotropic liquid crystalline (LLC) nanoparticles, such as cubosomes and hexosomes. Efforts are being made to generate a pH dependent system, which exhibits slow release hexosomes (H2) at physiological pH and fast release cubosomes (Q2) at acidic disease sites such as in various cancers and bacte...
Natural biopolymers such as food gums can be effective in improving the physical stability of colloidal particle dispersions. To improve the loading stability of curcumin in liposomes, liposomes with gum arabic (GA) or sodium alginate (SA) (0–2% w/v) were prepared and their physicochemical properties evaluated. Results showed that GA, which has a h...
The remarkable range of lyotropic liquid crystalline mesophases formed by lipid self -assembly in aqueous conditions has elicited significant research interest, particularly due to their potential applications in drug delivery,...
Cubosomes with an internal three-dimensional periodic and porous particulate nanostructure have emerged as a promising drug delivery system for hydrophobic small molecules as well as large biomolecules over the past several decades. Limited understanding of their safety profiles and biodistribution, however, hinders clinical translation. This study...
Hypothesis:
Control of the nanostructure of self-assembled systems may be achieved through manipulation of surfactant molecular packing and interfacial curvature. In order to phase engineer the inverse micellar cubosomes in some monoolein-fatty acid systems, lipids with wedge shaped molecular geometry were incorporated to promote the formation of...
Janus particles, which are named after the two-faced Roman god Janus, have two distinct sides with different surface features, structures, and compositions. This asymmetric structure enables the combination of different or even incompatible physical, chemical, and mechanical properties within a single particle. Much effort has been focused on the p...
Non-lamellar lyotropic liquid crystalline (LLC) lipid nanomaterials have emerged as a promising class of advanced materials for the next generation of nanomedicine, comprising mainly of amphiphilic lipids and functional additives self-assembling into two- and three-dimensional, inverse hexagonal and cubic nanostructures. In particular the lyotropic...
Chemotherapy using cytotoxic agents such as paclitaxel (PTX) is one of the most effective treatments for advanced ovarian cancer. However due to non-specific targeting of the drug and the presence of toxic solvents required for dissolving PTX prior to injection, there are several serious side effects associated with this treatment. In this study, w...
The transition between the lyotropic liquid crystalline lamellar and the bicontinuous cubic mesophase drives multiple fundamental cellular processes involving changes in cell membrane topology including endocytosis and membrane budding. While several theoretical models have been proposed to explain this dynamic transformation, experimental validati...
Mesophase structures of self-assembled lyotropic liquid crystalline nanoparticles are important factors that directly influence their ability to encapsulate and release drugs, and their biological activities. However, it is difficult to predict and precisely control the mesophase behaviour of these materials, especially in complex systems with seve...
We report here the lyotropic liquid crystalline phase behaviour of two lipid nanoparticulate systems containing mixtures of monoolein, capric acid and saturated diacyl phosphatidylcholines dispersed by the Pluronic F127 block copolymer. Synchrotron small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) was used to screen the phase behaviour of a library of lipid nano...
The advent of nanomedicine requires novel delivery vehicles to actively target their site of action. Here, we demonstrate the development of lung-targeting drug-loaded liposomes and their efficacy, specificity and safety. Our study focuses on glucocorticoids methylprednisolone (MPS), a commonly used drug to treat lung injuries. The steroidal molecu...
Self-assembled lyotropic liquid crystalline lipid nanoparticles have been developed for a wide range of biomedical applications with an emerging focus for use as delivery vehicles for drugs, genes, and in vivo imaging agents. In this study, we report the generation of lipid nanoparticle libraries with information regarding mesophase and lattice par...
Self-assembled lipid lyotropic liquid crystalline nanoparticles such as hexosomes and cubosomes contain internal anisotropic and isotropic nanostructures respectively. Despite the remarkable potential of such nanoparticles for various biomedical applications, the stabilisers used in formulating the nanoparticles are often limited to commercially av...
Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have been widely investigated in drug delivery and imaging. However, for such biomedical applications, the modification of AuNPs is necessary to improve their aqueous dispersion stability and biocompatibility, especially in a salt environment. Here, we report a simple and highly efficient method to create a library of pol...
Lyotropic liquid crystalline nanoparticle dispersions are of interest as delivery vectors for biomedicine. Aqueous dispersions of liposomes, cubosomes and hexosomes are commonly stabilised by non-ionic amphiphilic block copolymers to prevent flocculation and phase separation. Pluronic stabilisers such as F127 are commonly used, however, there is in...
We present the first observation of Janus nanoparticles consisting of stable, co-existing ordered mesophases in discrete particles created by lipid self-assembly. Cryo-TEM images provided visual identification of the multi-compartment Janus nanoparticles and, combined with SAXS data, confirmed the presence of mixed cubic phases and mixed cubic/hexa...
The conformation of deamidated gliadins and beta-casein in solution and adsorbed at the interface of oil-in-water emulsions was studied using synchrotron radiation circular dichroism (SRCD) and front-facefluorescence spectroscopy. Deamidation led to partial unfolding of gliadins in solution. The alpha-helix content of the protein decreased from 35%...
The conformation and structural dimensions of α-lactalbumin (α-La) both in solution and adsorbed at oil-water interfaces of emulsions were investigated using synchrotron radiation circular dichroism (SRCD) spectroscopy, front-face tryptophan fluorescence (FFTF) spectroscopy, and dual polarization interferometry (DPI). The near-UV SRCD and the FFTF...
Understanding the factors that control protein structure and stability at the oil-water interface continues to be a major focus to optimize the formulation of protein-stabilized emulsions. In this study, a combination of synchrotron radiation circular dichroism spectroscopy, front-face fluorescence spectroscopy, and dual polarization interferometry...
The structure of proteins at interfaces is a key factor determining the stability as well as organoleptic properties of food emulsions. While it is widely believed that proteins undergo conformational changes at interfaces, the measurement of these structural changes remains a significant challenge. In this study, the conformational changes of beta...
Questions
Question (1)
I have been working with liposomes loaded with cytotoxic drugs. I used homemade resazurin solution (Alamar Blue) to investigate cell cytotoxicity of my drug-loaded liposomes. I consistently obtained false positive results. For example, from Alamar Blue fluorescence reading, liposome-treated cell samples have 200% cell viability when normalized to untreated cell controls.
