Nanomechanics of magnetically driven cellular endocytosis

Being essential for many pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic processes and playing a crucial role in regulating substrate detachment that enables cellular locomotion, endocytotic mechanisms in many aspects still remain a mystery and therefore can hardly be controlled. Here, we report on experimental and modeling studies of the magnetically assisted endocytosis of functionalized superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles by prostate cancer cells (PC-3) and characterize the time and force scales of the cellular uptake machinery. The results indicate how the cellular uptake rate could be controlled by applied magnetic field, membrane elasticity, and nanoparticle magnetic moment.