1. A crosslinked colloidal network of peptide/nucleic base amphiphiles for targeted cancer cell encapsulation
- Author
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Peng Qiu, Yuedong Zhu, Haiting Pan, Defan Yao, Junchen Wu, Yanyan Song, Yanzi Zhou, and Junji Zhang
- Subjects
chemistry.chemical_classification ,Biocompatibility ,010405 organic chemistry ,Oligonucleotide ,Supramolecular chemistry ,Peptide ,Nanotechnology ,General Chemistry ,010402 general chemistry ,01 natural sciences ,0104 chemical sciences ,Thymine ,Rhodamine ,Chemistry ,chemistry.chemical_compound ,chemistry ,Amphiphile ,Nucleic acid - Abstract
The use of peptide amphiphiles (PAs) is becoming increasingly popular, not only because of their unique self-assembly properties but also due to the versatility of designs, allowing biological responsiveness, biocompatibility, and easy synthesis, which could potentially contribute to new drug design and disease treatment concepts. Oligonucleotides, another major functional bio-macromolecule class, have been introduced recently as new functional building blocks into PAs, further enriching the tools available for the fabrication of bio-functional PAs. Taking advantage of this, in the present work, two nucleic base-linked (adenine, A and thymine, T) RGD-rich peptide amphiphiles (NPAs) containing the fluorophores naphthalimide and rhodamine (Nph-A and Rh-T) were designed and synthesized. The two NPAs exhibit distinctive assembly behaviours with spherical (Rh-T) and fibrous (Nph-A) morphologies, and mixing Nph-A with Rh-T leads to a densely crosslinked colloidal network (Nph-A/Rh-T) via mutually promoted supramolecular polymerization via nucleation-growth assembly. Because of the RGD-rich sequences in the crosslinked network, further research on in situ targeted cancer cell (MDA-MB-231) encapsulation via RGD–integrin recognition was performed, and the modulation of cell behaviours (e.g., cell viability and migration) was demonstrated using both confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) imaging and a scratch wound healing assay., A cross-linking of peptide–nucleic base amphiphiles leads to a dense colloidal network that can perform targeted cancer cell encapsulation in situ.
- Published
- 2021