Nano-Bio Interaction between Blood Plasma Proteins and Water-Soluble Silicon Quantum Dots with Enabled Cellular Uptake and Minimal Cytotoxicity

Abstract

A better understanding of the compatibility of water-soluble semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) upon contact with the bloodstream is important for biological applications, including biomarkers working in the first therapeutic spectral window for deep tissue imaging. Herein, we investigated the conformational changes of blood plasma proteins during the interaction with near-infrared light-emitting nanoparticles, consisting of Pluronic F127 shells and cores comprised of assembled silicon QDs terminated with decane monolayers. Albumin and transferrin have high quenching constants and form a hard protein corona on the nanoparticle. In contrast, fibrinogen has low quenching constants and forms a soft protein corona. A circular dichroism (CD) spectrometric study investigates changes in the protein’s secondary and tertiary structures with incremental changes in the nanoparticle concentrations. As expected, the addition of nanoparticles causes the denaturation of the plasma proteins. However, it is noteworthy that the conformational recovery phenomena are observed for fibrinogen and transferrin, suggesting that the nanoparticle does not influence the ordered structure of proteins in the bloodstream. In addition, we observed enabled cellular uptake (NIH3T3 Fibroblasts) and minimal cytotoxicity using different cell lines (HeLa, A549, and NIH3T3). This study offers a basis to design QDs without altering the biomacromolecule’s original conformation with enabled cellular uptake with minimal cytotoxicity.

Liposome-polymer complex for drug delivery system and vaccine stabilization

“…As the most crucial biological fluid i.e., blood contains more than 1000 types of blood proteins also termed as plasma proteins which serve many functions like transport of vitamins, minerals, hormones and functioning the immune systems. Despite the promising body functions offered by these plasma proteins, their interaction with therapeutic moieties like drug and nanocarriers mainly liposome-polymer complexes are very important concerns for its translation from basic research to biomedical applications [182,183]. The binding of plasma proteins on the lipoplex surface occurs immediately upon their introduction into a physiological environment and is the first barrier of defense, which could lead to physical changes in the formulation, such as aggregation and charge neutralization, non-specific biodistribution, trigger elimination by phagocytic cells and biochemical activation of defense cascades, as a result, decrease the therapeutic efficacy and increase the undesirable toxicities [184].…”

Effects of microenvironmental factors on assessing nanoparticle toxicity

“…In vivo , proteins interact with nanoparticles and form a protein corona. 44,45 Once the NPs come into the bloodstream consisting of cells, their initial properties could be changed since proteins, such as serum albumin and apolipoproteins, aggregate on the surface of the nanoparticle to form a nanoparticle–protein corona. 46 As the properties of nanoparticles can be influenced by bound proteins in blood or serum, biochemical characterization of the particle–protein corona has been conducted by using various methodologies to investigate the structural and functional transformation.…”

Experimental and In Silico interaction studies of Alpha Amylase-Silver nanoparticle: a nano-bio-conjugate

“…Computational docking which often called as in silico molecular docking or merely docking is a computational approach, that strives for mimicking the binding of ligand molecule to the protein molecule. [32][33][34][35][36] It predicts the optimum binding conformation. Orientation of molecules interacting with each other in 3D space including estimation of binding energy, binding affinity or a scoring function that represents the strength of binding, 3D structure and stability of the protein-ligand complex.…”