Ma Chao, Liu Xiaoman, Wu Guangyu, Zhou Pei, Zhou Yuting, Wang Lei, Huang Xin
MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China.
ACS Macro Lett. 2017 Jul 18;6(7):689-694. doi: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.7b00422. Epub 2017 Jun 19.
Protein-based nanoparticles with tailored properties by using different functional proteins as building blocks have many actual and potential applications in biomedicine, biotechnology, and nanotechnology. In this study, we demonstrated a facile and efficient way to synthesize protein-based nanoparticles by taking advantage of photoinitiated reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization-induced self-assembly by using multi-RAFT modified bovine serum albumin (BSA) as a macro-RAFT agent. The growth of the PHPMA chains results in the increase of the hydrophobicity of the star BSA-PHPMA conjugates, and when reaching the critical aggregation concentration in aqueous solution, they will aggregate into nanoparticles via the hydrophobic interaction of PHPMA. The generated nanoparticles also showed excellent encapsulation ability toward both hydrophobic and hydrophilic components, and as a proof of concept, after loading cancer drug DOX or biomacromolecule DNA, the protease-mediated release of the encapsulants was demonstrated. It is anticipated that the described method may open up new opportunities for designing a variety of protein-polymer self-assembled nanostructures tailored to specific applications.
通过使用不同功能蛋白质作为构建块来制备具有定制性质的蛋白质基纳米颗粒，在生物医学、生物技术和纳米技术领域有许多实际和潜在的应用。在本研究中，我们展示了一种简便有效的方法来合成蛋白质基纳米颗粒，该方法利用光引发的可逆加成-断裂链转移（RAFT）聚合诱导自组装，使用多RAFT修饰的牛血清白蛋白（BSA）作为大分子RAFT试剂。PHPMA链的增长导致星形BSA-PHPMA共轭物疏水性增加，当在水溶液中达到临界聚集浓度时，它们将通过PHPMA的疏水相互作用聚集形成纳米颗粒。所生成的纳米颗粒对疏水性和亲水性成分均表现出优异的包封能力，作为概念验证，在负载抗癌药物DOX或生物大分子DNA后，证明了蛋白酶介导的包封剂释放。预计所描述的方法可能为设计针对特定应用定制的各种蛋白质-聚合物自组装纳米结构开辟新的机会。
