This review is a comprehensive description of the past decade of research into understanding how the geometry and size of nanoparticles affect their interaction with biological systems: from single cells to whole organisms. Recently, there has been a great deal of effort to use both the shape and the size of nanoparticles to target specific cellular uptake mechanisms, biodistribution patterns, and pharmacokinetics. While the successes of spherical lipid-based nanoparticles have heralded marked changes in chemotherapy worldwide, the history of asbestos-induced lung disease casts a long shadow over fibrous materials to date. The impact of particle morphology is known to be intertwined with many physicochemical parameters, namely, size, elasticity, surface chemistry, and biopersistence. In this review, we first highlight some of the morphologies observed in nature as well as shapes available to us through synthetic strategies. Following this we discuss attempts to understand the cellular uptake of nanoparticles through various theoretical models before comparing this with observations from in vitro and in vivo experiments. In addition, we consider the impact of nanoparticle shape at different size regimes on targeting, cytotoxicity, and cellular mechanics.

中文翻译：

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形式跟随功能：纳米颗粒的形状及其对纳米医学的意义

这篇综述是对过去十年研究的全面描述，旨在了解纳米颗粒的几何形状和尺寸如何影响它们与生物系统的相互作用：从单细胞到整个生物。近来，已经做出大量努力来使用纳米颗粒的形状和大小来靶向特定的细胞摄取机制，生物分布模式和药代动力学。尽管球形脂质基纳米颗粒的成功预示着全球化学疗法的显着变化，但迄今为止，石棉诱发的肺部疾病的历史为纤维材料蒙上了长长的阴影。已知颗粒形态的影响与许多物理化学参数（大小，弹性，表面化学和生物持久性）交织在一起。在这篇评论中，我们首先重点介绍自然界中观察到的某些形态以及通过合成策略可获得的形状。在此之后，我们讨论了通过各种理论模型了解纳米颗粒对细胞摄取的尝试，然后将其与体外和体内实验的观察结果进行比较。另外，我们考虑了纳米颗粒形状在不同大小范围内对靶向，细胞毒性和细胞力学的影响。