Fig. 1: Effects of PACE composition and NP characteristics on blood concentration and biodistribution.

a Schematic of tunable PACE family polymers from monomer building blocks to formulated NPs, NA loading: nucleic acid encapsulation into NPs. b Blood NP concentration over time following systemic IV injection of dye-loaded PACE (blue), PACE-COOH (green), and PACE-PEG NPs (purple) of various sizes (see Supplementary Table 1) using quantitative microscopy (n = 3 mice per group per time point; error bars represent standard deviation (SD)). Representative end-point (c) IVIS analysis of PACE NP uptake in various organs (heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, and bone), CTL: untreated control. End-point analyses of (d) whole organ fluorescence quantification of PACE NP uptake in various organs (n = 3 mice per group per organ; error bars represent SD), (e) %NP+ cells in homogenized organs by flow cytometry (n = 3 mice per group per organ; error bars represent SD), (f) %NP+ cells in homogenized liver populations (bulk, F4/80⁺, and CD31⁺) by flow cytometry (n = 3 mice per group per population; error bars represent SD), and (g) %NP+ cells in homogenized lung populations (bulk, CD45⁺, and EpCAM⁺) by flow cytometry (n = 3 mice per group per population; error bars represent SEM). The effects of PACE NP characteristics on biodistribution as measured by (h) cumulative extrahepatic %NP+ cells and (i) cumulative number of NP+ extrahepatic organs, both as a function of time in circulation. PACE NPs are represented according to chemistry (PACE (blue), PACE-COOH (green), and PACE-PEG NPs (purple)) and size (see Supplementary Table 1).