Double Delivery. Micelles are widely touted as possible storage and delivery vehicles for a range of insoluble, active molecules, such as pharmaceuticals, gene therapy agents, and pesticides. More recently it has been recognized that, if a micelle were constructed with a subdivided core, different molecules could be solubilized in the two (or more) core compartments. This would enable simultaneous delivery, in prescribed stoichiometric proportions, of two molecules that might be otherwise incompatible. April Rasdal, an undergraduate student, and Zhibo Li, a graduate student working jointly with Professors Tim Lodge and Marc Hillmyer, have just reported the first demonstration of the simultaneous uptake of two chomophores into separate micellar compartments. The micelles were prepared in water from "mikto-arm" EOF star terpolymers, where the three star arms were water-soluble poly(ethylene oxide) ("O"), hydrophobic poly(ethylethylene) ("E"), and lipo- and hydrophobic poly(perfluoropropylene oxide) ("F"). Pyrene was taken up exclusively in the hydrocarbon core compartments, whereas a fluorinated naphthalene derivative (NFH) was taken up preferentially in the fluorocarbon nanodomains (see Figure). [Lodge, T.P.; Rasdal, A.; Li, Z.; Hillmyer, M.A.; "Simultaneous, Segregated Storage of Two Agents in a Multicompartment Micelle" J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2005, 127, 17608-17609; highlighted in Nature 2005, 438, 892.]

Schematic illustration of selective storage of dye molecules in different micelle solutions. Pyrene is selectively taken up by EO micelles and NFH is selectively taken up by OF micelles. µ-EOF micelles can solubilize both dyes in a multicompartmented core.