| Screening for effects of small molecules on cells grown in culture is a well-established method for drug discovery and testing, and faster throughput at lower cost is needed especially for lipophilic materials. Small-molecule arrays present a promising approach. However, it has been a challenge to use them to obtain quantitative surface based dose-response curves in vitro, especially for lipophilic compounds. This thesis first introduces a simple novel method of surface-mediated delivery of drugs to cells from a microarray of phospholipid multilayers (layers thicker than a bilayer) encapsulating small molecules. The capability of controlling the dosage of the lipophilic molecules delivered to cells using the lipid multilayer microarray assay is further demonstrated using the nanointaglio printing method. This control enabled the variation of the volumes of surface supported lipid micro- and nanostructure arrays fabricated with nanointaglio. The volumes of the lipophilic drug-containing nanostructures were determined using a fluorescence microscope calibrated by atomic-force microscopy. The surface supported lipid volume information was used to obtain EC-50 values for the response of HeLa cells to treatment with three FDA-approved lipophilic anticancer drugs, docetaxel, imiquimod and triethylenemelamine, which were found to be significantly different from neat lipid controls. Features with sub-cellular lateral dimensions were found to be necessary to obtain normal cell adhesion with HeLa cells. Comparison of the microarray data to dose-response curves for the same drugs delivered liposomally from solution revealed quantitative differences in the efficacy values, which may be explained in terms of cell-adhesion playing a more important role in the surface-based assay. Finally, solution encapsulation was done for a library of hydrophilic silicon nanocrystals in order to set a solution standard for comparison with future surface supported delivery of the library. The work presented here opens the door for the possible benchtop high throughput and high content screening of hydrophobic materials that were previously difficult or impossible to readily screen. |
