A Spectroscopic Study of the Interaction between Cyanine Dyes with Different Skeleton Structures and Transferrin

Abstract

AbstractHuman serum transferrin (hTf) has been exploited as a bio‐carrier for targeted drugs to cancer cells where transferrin receptors are expressed at high levels. In this study, cyanine dyes DMSA and DMSB with a similar main core structure were selected to evaluate the effects of heterocycle on binding with hTf by spectroscopic methods. Fluorescence spectral results have shown that DMSB, which contains a selenazole ring, had a strong affinity binding with transferrin, up to 104‐fold higher than DMSA, which contains a thiazole ring. This difference may be attributed to the larger molecular volume of selenazole compared with DMSA. Binding distance between cyanine dyes and hTf demonstrated that the non‐radioactive energy transfer mechanism was also involved in the fluorescence quenching of protein. Furthermore, DMSB‐binding gave rise to a greater decrease of the α‐helix content of hTf than DMSA suggesting that hTf, which shows a looser structure binding with DMSB, increased polarity around the tryptophan residues of hTf, which was confirmed by circular dichroism and synchronous fluorescence spectroscopy. The study provides a certain theoretical basis for the design of cyanine dyes as biomolecular probe to target drugs for hTf.