The application of hybrid and hierarchical nanomaterials based on layered hydroxides and oxyhydroxides of metals is a swiftly progressing field in biomedicine. Layered double hydroxides (LDH) possess a large specific surface area, significant surface electric charge and biocompatibility. Their physical and structural properties enable them to adsorb various kinds of anionic species and to transport them into cells. However, possible side effects resulting from the interaction of LDH with anions of the intercellular and intracellular medium need to be considered, since such interaction can potentially disrupt ion transport, signaling processes, apoptosis, nutrition and proliferation of living cells. In the present paper molecular dynamics is used to determine the energies of interaction of organic anions (aspartic acid, glutamic acid and bicarbonate) with a fragment of layered double hydroxide Mg/Al-LDH. The average number of hydrogen bonds between the anions and the hydroxide surface and characteristic binding configurations are determined. Possible effects of LDH on the cell resulting from binding of protein fragments and replacement of native intracellular anions with delivered anions are considered.

The interaction between the fundamental mode surface Rayleigh waves and the buried heterogeneities with various sizes and different velocity contrasts was studied on base numerical simulation. The field of surface oscillations in the proximity of the scattering heterogeneities was computed as a function of frequency. The synthetic seismograms were used for numerical simulation of the microseismic sounding technology proposed earlier, implying that the solution of the inverse problem for the structure of the medium containing inclusions can be derived from the information contained in the ambient microseismic field. It is assumed that the depth of the layer to be reconstructed is linked with the frequency of the microseisms by a simple relation with the help of a numerical coefficient equal to 0.4–0.5. The combined results of the simulation of a direct problem together with the simple inverse problem solution show that the microseismic sounding technique ensures adequate estimation of the medium structure. Previously, the technology was based on the experimental data only and was phenomenological in character. Some relations between the velocity parameters of the original model heterogeneities and their reconstructed images were also studied.

Owing to their unique physicochemical properties, nanomaterials have become a focus of multidisciplinary research efforts including investigations of their interactions with tumor cells and stromal compartment of tumor microenvironment (TME) toward the development of next-generation anticancer therapies. Here, we report that agglomerates of radially assembled Al hydroxide crumpled nanosheets exhibit anticancer activity due to their selective adsorption properties and positive charge. This effect was demonstrated in vitro by decreased proliferation and viability of tumor cells, and further confirmed in two murine cancer models. Moreover, Al hydroxide nanosheets almost completely inhibited the growth of murine melanoma in vivo in combination with a minimally effective dose of doxorubicin. Our direct molecular dynamics simulation demonstrated that Al hydroxide nanosheets can cause significant ion imbalance in the living cell perimembranous space through the selective adsorption of extracellular anionic species. This approach to TME dysregulation could lay the foundation for development of novel anticancer therapy strategies.

The increasing growth in the development of various novel nanomaterials and their biomedical applications has drawn increasing attention to their biological safety and potential health impact. The most commonly used methods for nanomaterial toxicity assessment are based on laboratory experiments. In recent years, with the aid of computer modeling and data science, several in silico methods for the cytotoxicity prediction of nanomaterials have been developed. An affordable, cost-effective numerical modeling approach thus can reduce the need for in vitro and in vivo testing and predict the properties of designed or developed nanomaterials. We propose here a new in silico method for rapid cytotoxicity assessment of two-dimensional nanomaterials of arbitrary chemical composition by using free energy analysis and molecular dynamics simulations, which can be expressed by a computational indicator of nanotoxicity (CIN_2D). We applied this approach to five well-known two-dimensional nanomaterials promising for biomedical applications: graphene, graphene oxide, layered double hydroxide, aloohene, and hexagonal boron nitride nanosheets. The results corroborate the available laboratory biosafety data for these nanomaterials, supporting the applicability of the developed method for predictive nanotoxicity assessment of two-dimensional nanomaterials.

The effect of the nonequilibrium structure of 2D aluminum hydroxide-based objects on the macroscopic response (adsorption properties) is studied in the physical mesomechanics framework. Molecular dynamics simulation is performed to examine the nature of selective adsorption of the considered low-dimensional structures. The role of defects and structural elements, such as polar functional groups, is analyzed. Model ions and endotoxin are used to illustrate the selective character of adsorption. Prospects for biomedical applications of the obtained results are discussed.