Electrospray differential mobility analysis for nanoscale medicinal and pharmaceutical applications

Abstract

Nanoscale characterization tools hold the potential to overcome long-standing medicinal and pharmaceutical challenges. For example, electrospray differential mobility analysis (ES-DMA) is an emerging tool that rapidly provides label-free multimodal size distributions for proteins and particles from ~1 nm to <500 nm with subnanometer precision. Here we critically review the contributions of this tool to medicine, pharmaceutical practice, and pharmaceutical production. Our review critically evaluates, first, the use of ES-DMA for diagnostic strategies that detect and quantify lipoproteins, bacterial infections, viruses and amyloid fibrillation and then focuses on ES-DMA's contribution to treatment strategies that employ tailored virus-like particles as vaccines and decorated nanoparticle vectors for gene delivery. Our review also highlights ES-DMA's contribution to viral clearance and antibody aggregation and potential as a process analytical technology (PAT).

From the clinical editor: Electrospray differential mobility analysis is an emerging nanotechnology-based tool with potential clinical utility in the detection and quantification of lipoproteins, glycoproteins, viruses, amyloids, bacterial infections. Its contribution to treatment strategies and pharmaceutical production is also discussed in this comprehensive review.

Keywords: Cholesterol levels; Diagnosis; Gas-phase electrophoretic macromolecular mobility analyzer (GEMMA); Hyperlipidemia; Ion mobility spectroscopy; Nanomedicine.