Immunomodulatory Lectin-like Peptides for Fish Erythrocytes-Targeting as Potential Antiviral Drug Delivery Platforms.

Maria Salvador-Mira,Nerea Roher,Fanny Guzmán,Monica Arostica,Maria Del Mar Ortega-Villaizan,Luis Perez,Veronica Chico

doi:10.3390/ijms222111821

Abstract

One of the challenges of science in disease prevention is optimizing drug and vaccine delivery. Until now, many strategies have been employed in this sector, but most are quite complex and labile. To overcome these limitations, great efforts are directed to coupling drugs to carriers, either of natural or synthetic origin. Among the most studied cell carriers are antigen-presenting cells (APCs), however, red blood cells (RBCs) are positioned as attractive carriers in drug delivery due to their abundance and availability in the body. Furthermore, fish RBCs have a nucleus and have been shown to have a strong involvement in modulating the immune response. In this study, we evaluated the binding of three peptides to rainbow trout RBCs, two lectin-like peptides and another derived from Plasmodium falciparum membrane protein, in order to take advantage of this peptide-RBCs binding to generate tools to improve the specificity, efficacy, immunostimulatory effect, and safety of the antiviral therapeutic or prophylactic administration systems currently used.

Highlights

In order to evaluate the binding of the peptides for red blood cells (RBCs), we carried out a doseresponse assay using a concentration range from 25 to 100 μM
The binding of the Rhodamine (Rhd)-labeled peptides was evaluated by means of flow cytometry and calculated as the integrated median fluorescence intensity, which is computed by multiplying the relative frequency (% positive) of cells with the median fluorescence intensity (MFI)
The minimum concentration showed very low binding to RBCs, and concentrations of 50 and 100 μM showed higher and specific binding for all the peptides (Figure 1a,b)

Summary

Introduction

Great efforts are directed to the search for long-circulating drug carriers/vehicles that can provide sustained release of circulating therapeutic agents and improve the specificity, efficacy, and safety of therapeutic agents [5,6,7] In this regard, the idea of using red blood cells (RBCs) as natural and biocompatible carriers for the delivery and distribution of drugs or vaccines has been extensively studied [8,9]. Compared to other drug delivery systems, RBCs are the champions for their unique longevity in the bloodstream and their biocompatibility [8]

Methods

Results

Conclusion