Abstract
It is now well established that the surface of nanoparticles (NPs) in a biological environment is immediately modified by the adsorption of biomolecules with the formation of a protein corona and it is also accepted that the protein corona, rather than the original nanoparticle surface, defines a new biological identity. Consequently, a methodology to effectively study the interaction between nanomaterials and the biological corona encountered within an organism is a key objective in nanoscience for understanding the impact of the nanoparticle-protein interactions on the biological response in vitro and in vivo. Here, we outline an integrated methodology to address the different aspects governing the formation and the function of the protein corona of polystyrene nanoparticles coated with Transferrin by different strategies. Protein-NP complexes are studied both in situ (in human plasma, full corona FC) and after washing (hard corona, HC) in terms of structural properties, composition and second-order interactions with protein microarrays. Human protein microarrays are used to effectively study NP-corona/proteins interactions addressing the growing demand to advance investigations of the extrinsic function of corona complexes. Our data highlight the importance of this methodology as an analysis to be used in advance of the application of engineered NPs in biological environments.
Highlights
Today nanomaterials are widely used in medicine with an increasing concern about their possible long-term undesirable effects on humans
Details about the procedures used to functionalize these NPs are reported in the Experimental Section. These NPs were characterized by Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS), Z-potential measurements and Differential Centrifugal Sedimentation (DCS), to ensure the formation of monodispersed, Figure 1
The main purpose of our present study is to evaluate how physical interactions between Tf@PSOSO3H NPs and arrayed human proteins change in the presence of environmental proteins, when different competing processes are simultaneously taking place: protein corona complexes interacting with arrayed proteins, free plasma proteins interacting with protein corona complexes and free proteins interacting with arrayed proteins [11]
Summary
Today nanomaterials are widely used in medicine with an increasing concern about their possible long-term undesirable effects on humans. There are countless examples of newly engineered nanomaterials aiming either to target specific body compartments [18,19,20,21], or to work as diagnostic and therapeutic agents [13,22,23,24,25,26,27,28]. These nano-objects are often not fully characterized in the relevant biological environment, where they are normally distinguished by a new biological interface interacting with the living matter. The lack of definition of the real biological surface of the nanomaterials in situ can be an obstacle to clear interpretation of the impact of the NP-protein interactions on the biological response in vitro and in vivo
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