Defect-Engineered Metal–Organic Frameworks as Nanocarriers for Pharmacotherapy: Insights into Intracellular Dynamics at The Single Particle Level

Nanoscale Metal–Organic Frameworks (nanoMOFs) are widely implemented in a host of assays involving drug delivery, biosensing catalysis, and bioimaging. However, the cell pathways and cell fate remain poorly understood. Here, a new fluorescent nanoMOF integrating ATTO 655 into surface defects of colloidal UiO-66 is synthesized, allowing to track the spatiotemporal localization of Single nanoMOF in live cells. density functional theory reveals the stronger binding of ATTO 655 to the Zr₆ cluster nodes compared with phosphate and Alendronate Sodium. Parallelized tracking of the spatiotemporal localization of thousands of nanoMOFs and analysis using machine learning platforms reveals whether nanoMOFs remain outside as well as their cellular internalization pathways. To quantitatively assess their colocalization with endo/lysosomal compartments, a colocalization proxy approach relying on the nanoMOF detection of particles in one channel to the signal in the corresponding endo/lysosomal compartments channel, considering signal versus local background intensity ratio and signal-to-noise ratio is developed. This strategy mitigates colocalization value inflation from high or low signal expression in endo/lysosomal compartments. The results accurately measure the nanoMOFs’ colocalization from early to late endosomes and lysosomes and emphasize the importance of understanding their intracellular dynamics based on single-particle tracking for optimal and safe drug delivery.