Peptides are promising candidates to design biomaterials due to their excellent biocompatibility and bioavailability. Furthermore, their structure and function can be easily modified by verifying the number and constitute of amino acid residues and chemical modification. With surfactant activity, enzyme resistance, and reactive oxygen species (ROS) responsiveness, oligo-proline containing peptides are promising to develop ROS-triggered degradable nanoparticles. Stimuli-responsiveness is robust approach to attain efficient controlled release and targeting <i>in vivo</i>. ROS are well-known marker of inflamed tissues and cancer tissues in mammalian cells. In contrast, plant cells show higher ROS level compared to mammalian cells due to photosynthesis via chloroplasts. From this point of view, ROS responsive nanocarriers are powerful means to attain effective and selective delivery in plant cells. Here, we designed several types of oligoproline-containing peptides with verifying the number of proline residues and evaluate their availability as ROS-triggered degradable nanocarriers.<br/>Several types of oligoproline-containing peptides, tri-, tetra-, and penta-peptides, were synthesized via liquid phase synthesis to evaluate the effect of proline residue number on ROS-responsiveness and formulation of nanoparticles. First, ROS-sensitiveness was evaluated and tetra- and penta-peptides were degraded by exposing to hydrogen peroxide containing cupper. Dynamic light scattering measurement revealed that these two peptides formulated submicron-sized nanoparticles in aqueous solution and the nanoparticles showed high colloidal stability. In addition, the nanoparticles were gradually degraded by exposing to ROS. Finally, we demonstrated their dye loading capacity and controlled release capacity as ROS-triggered degradable nanocarriers using fluorescent dye as a model molecule. The fluorescent dye was efficiently trapped by these nanoparticles by providing hydrophobic nanodomain in each nanoparticle. Furthermore, the encapsulated dyes were released by responding to ROS and the time scale in releasing was corresponding to the time in degrading. For these results, oligoproline-containing peptides can be available not only for ROS-triggered degradable nanocarrier.

Development of ROS-triggered degradable nanoparticles using oligoproline peptides as biomolecule delivery platform for plant cells

2019 Fall National Meeting

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