Acid Denaturation Inducing Self-Assembly of Curcumin-Loaded Hemoglobin Nanoparticles

Materials

Kaikai Wang²  Juan Wang²  Wenwen Hu²  Yifan Zhang²  Feng Zhi¹  Zaigang Zhou²  Jinhui Wu²  Yiqiao Hu² 

[1] Modern Medical Research Center, Third Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Changzhou 213003, China;State Key laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology & Medical School, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China;

关键词: drug carrier;    hydrophobic forces;    self-assemble;    cell uptake;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ma8125486

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Hemoglobin is a promising drug carrier but lacks extensive investigation. The chemical conjugation of hemoglobin and drugs is costly and complex, so we have developed curcumin-loaded hemoglobin nanoparticles (CCM-Hb-NPs) via self-assembly for the first time. Using the acid-denaturing method, we avoid introducing denaturants and organic solvents. The nanoparticles are stable with uniform size. We have conducted a series of experiments to examine the interaction of hemoglobin and CCM, including hydrophobic characterization, SDS-PAGE. These experiments substantiate that this self-assembly process is mainly driven by hydrophobic forces. Our nanoparticles achieve much higher cell uptake efficiency and cytotoxicity than free CCM solution in vitro. The uptake inhibition experiments also demonstrate that our nanoparticles were incorporated via the classic clathrin-mediated endocytosis pathway. These results indicate that hemoglobin nanoparticles formed by self-assembly are a promising drug delivery system for cancer therapy.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.