Stiffness can mediate the balance between hydrodynamic forces and avidity to impact the targeting of flexible polymeric nanoparticles in flow*

We report computational investigations of deformable polymeric nanoparticles (NPs) under colloidal suspension flow and adhesive environment. We employ a coarse-grained model for the polymeric NP and perform Brownian dynamics simulations with hydrodynamic interactions and in presence of wall-confinement, particulate margination, and wall-adhesion for obtaining NP microstructure, shape, and anisotropic and inhomogeneous transport properties for different NP stiffness. Comparing our computational results for the amount of NP margination to the near-wall adhesion regime with those of our binding experiments in cell culture under shear, as well as those of tissue targeting measurements in vivo in mice, we found quantitative agreement on shear-enhanced binding, effects of particulate volume fraction, and effects of NP stiffness. The reported combined computational approach and results are expected to enable fine-tuning of design and optimization of flexible NP in targeted drug delivery applications.