Nanoplastics Penetration Across the Blood-Brain Barrier

Abstract

Microplastics and nanoplastics (MNPs), originating from plastic degradation, have arisen to be a threat to ecology and human health. Alarmingly, the penetration of MNPs across the highly selective blood-brain barrier (BBB) poses an emerging and urgent risk, yet its molecular mechanism remains unexplored. In this work, using long-time-scale (over 27 s) all-atom explicit solvent steered molecular dynamics, we examine the free energy of the passive permeation of four polymer nanoparticles: polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, and polyethylene terephthalate. Polyethylene and polypropylene nanoparticles exhibited a remarkable preference for entering the BBB, attributed to their high hydrophobicity. Our study reveals that polymers can enter the BBB as polymerized nanoplastics and exit as dispersed polymer chains as the nanoparticles dissolve within the BBB. Further, the crystalline structure of polyethylene nanoparticles is found to adopt varying orientations. Our work advances the knowledge about the mechanism of nanoplastic penetration across the BBB, which could aid in the rational design of therapeutics for nanoplastic penetration inhibitors. TOC Graphics O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=151 SRC="FIGDIR/small/675462v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (71K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1b20796org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1102985org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@15fc22org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@15c2260_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG