College of Pharmacy and Gachon Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Gachon University, Incheon 21936, Korea.
Int J Nanomedicine. 2020 Aug 6;15:5783-5802. doi: 10.2147/IJN.S254808. eCollection 2020.
Nanoparticles (NPs) are highly potent tools for the diagnosis of diseases and specific delivery of therapeutic agents. Their development and application are scientifically and industrially important. The engineering of NPs and the modulation of their in vivo behavior have been extensively studied, and significant achievements have been made in the past decades. However, in vivo applications of NPs are often limited by several difficulties, including inflammatory responses and cellular toxicity, unexpected distribution and clearance from the body, and insufficient delivery to a specific target. These unfavorable phenomena may largely be related to the in vivo protein-NP interaction, termed "protein corona." The layer of adsorbed proteins on the surface of NPs affects the biological behavior of NPs and changes their functionality, occasionally resulting in loss-of-function or gain-of-function. The formation of a protein corona is an intricate process involving complex kinetics and dynamics between the two interacting entities. Structural changes in corona proteins have been reported in many cases after their adsorption on the surfaces of NPs that strongly influence the functions of NPs. Thus, understanding of the conformational changes and unfolding process of proteins is very important to accelerate the biomedical applications of NPs. Here, we describe several protein corona characteristics and specifically focus on the conformational fluctuations in corona proteins induced by NPs.
纳米粒子（NPs）是用于疾病诊断和治疗药物靶向递送的高效工具。它们的开发和应用在科学和工业上都具有重要意义。NPs 的工程设计及其体内行为的调控已经得到了广泛的研究，在过去几十年中取得了重大进展。然而，NPs 的体内应用常常受到多种困难的限制，包括炎症反应和细胞毒性、意外的体内分布和清除以及对特定靶标的递药不足。这些不利现象可能在很大程度上与体内蛋白质-NP 相互作用有关，称为“蛋白质冠”。吸附在 NPs 表面的蛋白质层影响 NPs 的生物学行为并改变其功能，偶尔导致功能丧失或功能获得。蛋白质冠的形成是一个复杂的过程，涉及到两个相互作用实体之间复杂的动力学和动态变化。在许多情况下，吸附在 NPs 表面后，冠蛋白的结构发生变化，强烈影响 NPs 的功能。因此，了解蛋白质的构象变化和展开过程对于加速 NPs 的生物医学应用非常重要。在这里，我们描述了几种蛋白质冠的特征，并特别关注 NP 诱导的冠蛋白质构象波动。
