Electro-responsive Hydrogel-Based Microfluidic Actuator Platform for Photothermal Therapy.

Electrical stimuli play an important role in regulating the delivery of plasmonic nanomaterials with cancer targeting peptides. Here, we developed an electro-responsive hydrogel-based microfluidic actuator platform for brain tumor targeting and photothermal therapy (PTT) applications. The electro-responsive hydrogels consisted of highly conductive silver nanowires (AgNWs) and biocompatible collagen I gels. We confirmed that an electrically conductive hydrogel could be used as an effective actuator by applying an electrical signal in the microfluidic platform. Furthermore, we successfully demonstrated PTT efficacy for brain tumor cells using targetable Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) peptide-conjugated gold nanorods (GNRs). Therefore, our electro-responsive hydrogel-based microfluidic actuator platform could be useful for electro-responsive intelligent nanomaterial delivery and PTT applications.