Inhibition of amyloid peptide fibrillation by inorganic nanoparticles: functional similarities with proteins.

Aggregation of amyloid-β peptides (Aβ) into fibrils is the key pathological feature of many neurodegenerative disorders. Typical drugs inhibit Aβ fibrillation by binding to monomers in 1:1 ratio and display low efficacy. Here, we report that model CdTe nanoparticles (NPs) can efficiently prevent fibrillation of Aβ associating with 100–330 monomers at once. The inhibition is based on the binding multiple Aβ oligomers rather than individual monomers. The oligomer route of inhibition is associated with strong van der Waals interactions characteristic for NPs and presents substantial advantages in the mitigation of toxicity of the misfolded peptides. Molar efficiency and the inhibition mechanism revealed by NPs are analogous to those found for proteins responsible for prevention of amyloid fibrillation in human body. Besides providing a stimulus for finding biocompatible NPs with similar capabilities, these data suggest that inorganic NPs can mimic some sophisticated biological functionalities of proteins.