AVS 60th International Symposium and Exhibition
    Nanoparticle-Liquid Interfaces Focus Topic Thursday Sessions
       Session NL+AS+BI-ThA

Paper NL+AS+BI-ThA7
Protein-Corona: A New Gateway to Disease Therapeutics

Thursday, October 31, 2013, 4:00 pm, Room 201 B

Session: Nanoparticles with Proteins and Cells: Modelling and Measurement
Presenter: K. Giri, Mayo Clinic
Authors: K. Giri, Mayo Clinic
P. Mukherjee, Mayo Clinic
M. Zimmermann, Mayo Clinic
S. Khader, Mayo Clinic
B. Madden, Mayo Clinic
D. McCormick, Mayo Clinic
Correspondent: Click to Email
Nanomedicine is a burgeoning field with immense potential in disease therapeutics, diagnosis and imaging. However, an inevitable phenomenon regarding the use of nanoparticles (NPs) in vivo is the adsorption of proteins to its surface to form a layer called the “protein corona”. The concept of synthetic vs. biological identity of the NPs has emerged. Studies have reported that the acquired biological identity of NPs due to its protein corona influences not just the interaction of the NPs with its targets but also its fate. Among all the NPs that are currently being investigated in nanomedicine, gold nanoparticles (GNPs) are unique in that they posses strong affinity to bind to SH and NH2 containing molecules. Therefore, proteins by virtue of having cysteine and lysine residues function as unique substrates to bind to GNPs. We hypothesize that the proteome and secretome of cancer cells may include low abundance proteins that escape detection by conventional methods. Enrichment and identification of these proteins may play a critical role in understanding the pathophysiology of disease development and open new avenues for treatment. Our aim was to study the formation of protein corona on GNP surface as a unique way to enrich and identify low abundance proteins that can serve as new therapeutic targets for ovarian cancer. Understanding the interaction of proteins on GNP surface is important as it will guide modulation of protein corona formation for protein enrichment based on physicochemical properties and structure. Here, we present a systematic study of protein corona using 20 nm GNPs. We studied the binding of proteins from lysates derived from two ovarian cell lines, namely OSE (non-cancerous) and A2780 (cancerous). We followed the evolution of the corona for 24 hrs to account for the dynamic and competitive binding of proteins on the NP surface. We characterized the corona at 5 mins, 15 mins, 1hr, 6hrs and 24 hrs using UV-vis spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering, electron microscopy and ζ-potential measurements and identified corona constituents by mass spectroscopy. We focused on understanding what drives protein adsorption to the NP surface. Lastly, we identified low abundance proteins from the A2780 cell line that were enriched on GNP surface as a proof of concept study to demonstrate that protein corona can be effectively utilized for study of disease and its therapeutics.