Resolving the structure of dendritic carbohydrate-based nanoparticles

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There is a dramatically increasing world demand for green, sustainable biomaterials to enhance theperformance of functional foods, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, and personal care products.PhytoSpherix(TM) is one such material, an all-natural, high-tech additive which can add value to manyproducts in each of these markets. PhytoSpherix is comprised of nanoparticles made from joining manyglucose (sugar) molecules together in a branching fashion. They are essentially tiny balls of starch that serve asa form of energy storage in plants. They are thus not only biodegradable but biocompatible - they are ingestedwhen one eats sweet corn! PhystoSpherix particles have many useful properties such as the ability to absorband retain a great deal of water and to modify the viscosity of a liquid when used as an additive. However, asthey are very small and soft, it is difficult to resolve the structural details of the nanoparticles experimentally. Inthis grant we will use computer simulations to grow, simulate, and characterize the particle structure. Althoughthe particles are small (on the order of 50 nm), they are still comprised of many atoms making detailedsimulations very difficult. We will thus employ coarse-grained approaches at two different levels to model thenanoparticles: a very coarse-grained approach in which each glucose molecule is modeled as one bead and anatomistic-based coarse-grained approach that retains some of the chemical features of glucose. In addition tocharacterizing the structure, we will also use modeling at both levels to explore the dynamics of smallmolecules within the particles. Combining results across these different levels will give both fundamentalinsight into the nature of carbohydrate-bases dendritic materials which will be of great value in the fields ofpolymer science and bio-nanomaterials. This work is performed in collaboration with Mirexus Biotechnologiesand the knowledge that is generated will provide essential information for the development of new applicationsof PhytoSpherix particles such as drug and supplement delivery. This will fuel the growth of Mirexus as aCanadian research intensive company that hires highly qualified scientific and engineering personnel.