60 Multimodal Imaging and Artificial Intelligence Unveil Hot-Spot Deposition, Bronchial/Alveolar Dose and Cellular Fate of Biopersistent Nanoparticles in the Lung

Abstract Pulmonary delivery is not only of increasing importance to exploit local therapy for lung diseases like COVID-19, but also plays an essential role in interpreting health impact of inhaled hazardous (nano-)materials. Deciphering of biodistribution, biokinetics, and cell-mediated immunity of pulmonary delivered nanoparticles (NPs) remains insufficient. We applied state-of-the-art multimodal imaging and deep learning pipelines to elucidate the intricate deposition profiles and the fate of biopersistent NPs in the lung within cellular resolution. Spatially resolved delivery characteristics like inter- and intra-acinar distribution pattern and regional NP dosage were revealed by tissue-clearing light-sheet fluorescence microscopy for six common routes of pulmonary delivery, i.e., intranasal & oropharyngeal aspiration, intubated instillation, microsprayer application, ventilator-assisted & nose-only aerosol inhalation. Artificial intelligence-driven entire airway 3D segmentation (convolutional neural network) enabled accurate dosimetry of bronchial versus acinar/alveolar NP dose (B/A: 0.04 to 0.18 depending on delivery route) rather than the conventionally simplified 2D central-to-peripheral ratio (C/P: 1.32 to 3.79). Moreover, longitudinal 3D imaging revealed similar intra-acinar NP kinetics independent of delivery route. Inhaled NP relocation from the alveolar-epithelium to interstitium was traditionally claimed as the consequence of passive diffusion/transportation of NPs. This study, however, revealed that acinar NP transport can be attributed to the phagocytosis and migration of tissue-resident macrophages (TRMs) as evidenced by complementary analytical approaches (intravital microscopy, ex vivo 4D live-tissue microscopy, in situ immunofluorescence, ex vivo NP-lung interaction model, flow cytometry). Overall, this study elucidates holistic NP-lung delivery and biokinetics features and TRM immunity on the fate of biopersistent NPs.