Micro- and macrorheology of mucus

By S. Lai, Ying-Ying Wang, Denis Wirtz, J. Hanes. Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews, 2009

1,188 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Mucus is a complex biological material that lubricates and protects the human lungs, gastrointestinal (GI) tract, vagina, eyes, and other moist mucosal surfaces. Mucus serves as a physical barrier against foreign particles, including toxins, pathogens, and environmental ultrafine particles, while allowing rapid passage of selected gases, ions, nutrients, and many proteins. Its selective barrier properties are precisely regulated at the biochemical level across vastly different length scales. At the macroscale, mucus behaves as a non-Newtonian gel, distinguished from classical solids and liquids by its response to shear rate and shear stress, while, at the nanoscale, it behaves as a low viscosity fluid. Advances in the rheological characterization of mucus from the macroscopic to nanoscopic levels have contributed critical understanding to mucus physiology, disease pathology, and the development of drug delivery systems designed for use at mucosal surfaces. This article reviews the biochemistry that governs mucus rheology, the macro- and microrheology of human and laboratory animal mucus, rheological techniques applied to mucus, and the importance of an improved understanding of the physical properties of mucus to advancing the field of drug and gene delivery.

Subfields: Cell Biology, Molecular Biology, Pharmaceutical Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5674a39f70bee68fc4876d23e076296d6e295d13

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cell Biology

1. Eamonn A. Gaffney
2. Eric Lauga

In Molecular Biology

1. L. Ensign
2. J. Hanes
3. Namho Kim
4. J. S. Suk
5. Qingguo Xu
6. Eamonn A. Gaffney
7. Eric Lauga
8. M. Esteban

In Pharmaceutical Science

1. L. Ensign
2. J. Hanes
3. Namho Kim
4. J. S. Suk
5. Qingguo Xu
6. Eric Lauga
7. R. Cone
8. J. Rodrigo Vélez-Cordero

Citations in the corpus

• Oral Drug Delivery with Polymeric Nanoparticles: The Gastrointestinal Mucus Barriers (2011, background): “Although mucins are considered primarily responsible for the gel properties of mucus [16], mucus viscoelasticity is further regulated by water, lipid, and ion content, as comprehensively reviewed elsewhere [17].”
• Biological and Ecological Roles of External Fish Mucus: A Review (2018, background): “Composition of fish mucus and its rheological properties are vital for the maintenance of mucus functions [14].”
• PEGylation as a strategy for improving nanoparticle-based drug and gene delivery (2015, positive): “In addition to providing delivery benefits in the vagina, PEG-coated NPs have also been used as probes to characterize CVM structure using particle tracking microrheology (PTM), which can provide important insights into how particles and pathogens can penetrate mucus [141].”
• Waving transport and propulsion in a generalized Newtonian fluid (2013, background): “Mucus is a typical example of a non-Newtonian fluid, displaying both elastic behavior and stress relaxation as well as a shear-dependent viscosity [11].”
• Mammalian Sperm Motility: Observation and Theory (2011, background): “Finally, we note that modeling motility within physiological mucus has the additional complications of microrheological and electrochemical interactions between the sperm and the mucin fibers (Katz et al. 1989, Lai et al. 2009).”