Limited impact of the protein corona on the cellular uptake of PEGylated zein micelles by melanoma cancer cells

Meewan, Jitkasem and Somani, Sukrut and Laskar, Partha and Irving, Craig and Mullin, Margaret and Woods, Stuart and Roberts, Craig W. and Alzahrani, Abdullah R. and Ferro, Valerie A. and McGill, Suzanne and Weidt, Stefan and Burchmore, Richard and Dufès, Christine (2022) Limited impact of the protein corona on the cellular uptake of PEGylated zein micelles by melanoma cancer cells. Pharmaceutics, 14 (2). 439. ISSN 1999-4923 (https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmaceutics14020439)

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Abstract

The formation of a protein layer "corona" on nanoparticle surface upon entry in a biological environment was shown to strongly influence the interactions with cells, especially affecting the uptake of nanomedicines. In this work, we present the impact of the protein corona on the uptake of PEGylated zein micelles by cancer cells, macrophages, and dendritic cells. Zein was successfully conjugated with poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) of varying chain lengths (5K and 10K) and assembled into micelles. Our results demonstrated that PEGylation conferred stealth effects to the zein micelles. The presence of human plasma did not impact the uptake levels of the micelles by melanoma cancer cells, regardless of the PEG chain length used. In contrast, it decreased the uptake by macrophages and dendritic cells. These results therefore make PEGylated zein micelles promising as potential drug delivery systems for cancer therapy.

ORCID iDs

Meewan, Jitkasem, Somani, Sukrut ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0697-1110, Laskar, Partha, Irving, Craig, Mullin, Margaret, Woods, Stuart ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3798-2074, Roberts, Craig W. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0653-835X, Alzahrani, Abdullah R. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7782-0574, Ferro, Valerie A. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1967-3603, McGill, Suzanne, Weidt, Stefan, Burchmore, Richard and Dufès, Christine ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7963-6364;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)