Protein Corona of Nanoparticles and Its Application in Drug Delivery

Abstract

The nanoparticles (NP) as a drug delivery system have demonstrated tremendous benefits including improved drug solubility, enhanced pharmacodynamics, targeted drug delivery, and potential of theranostics. Understanding of how NP behaves under the biological settings will provide insights to optimize the drug delivery performance. Up to now, large efforts have been focused on unveiling the NP-cell interaction, especially the NP-protein interactions. In biological fluid either in vitro or in vivo, the adsorption of proteins on NP is inevitable due to the reactive surface of NP. In fact, the NP together with its adsorbed proteins (protein corona) is what the cell really “sees” during drug delivery. For the last decade, the composition, evolution, and biological impact of protein corona on NP have attracted intensive research interests. The protein corona altered the physiochemical identity, cytotoxic profile as well as drug delivery efficiency of NP. Thus, a comprehensive understanding of protein corona will help guide the design and optimization of NP-mediated drug delivery. This chapter will introduce the current progress of protein corona researches and the challenges of modulating protein corona to improve the drug delivery of NP.