Understanding the good and poor cell targeting activity of gold nanostructures functionalized with molecular units for the epidermal growth factor receptor

Nanostructures can strongly interact with cells or other biological structures; furthermore when they are functionalized with targeting units, they are of great interest for a variety of applications in the biotechnology field like those for efficient imaging, diagnosis and therapy and in particular for cancer theranostics. Obtaining targeting with good specificity and sensitivity is a key necessity, which, however, is affected by the complexity of the interactions between the nanostructures and the biological components. In this work we report the study of specificity and sensitivity of gold nanoparticles functionalized with the peptide GE11 for the targeting of the epidermal growth factor receptor, expressed on many cells and, in particular, on many types of cancer cells. We show how a combination of spectroscopic measurements and molecular dynamics simulations allows the comprehension of the targeting activity of peptides linked to the surface of gold nanostructures and how the targeting is tuned by the presence of polyethylene glycol chains.

[1]  F. Formaggio,et al.  Molecular Sponge: pH-Driven Reversible Squeezing of Stimuli-Sensitive Peptide Monolayers. , 2019, Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids.

[2]  A. Rosato,et al.  Enhanced EGFR Targeting Activity of Plasmonic Nanostructures with Engineered GE11 Peptide , 2017, Advanced healthcare materials.

[3]  F. Bordi,et al.  Folate-based single cell screening using surface enhanced Raman microimaging. , 2016, Nanoscale.

[4]  Berk Hess,et al.  GROMACS: High performance molecular simulations through multi-level parallelism from laptops to supercomputers , 2015 .

[5]  Xiaofei Liang,et al.  Design and biological activity of epidermal growth factor receptor-targeted peptide doxorubicin conjugate. , 2015, Biomedicine & pharmacotherapy = Biomedecine & pharmacotherapie.

[6]  P. Stewart,et al.  Detection and imaging of aggressive cancer cells using an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-targeted filamentous plant virus-based nanoparticle. , 2015, Bioconjugate chemistry.

[7]  Yu Cheng,et al.  Blood-brain barrier permeable gold nanoparticles: an efficient delivery platform for enhanced malignant glioma therapy and imaging. , 2014, Small.

[8]  D. Astruc,et al.  Nanogold plasmonic photocatalysis for organic synthesis and clean energy conversion. , 2014, Chemical Society reviews.

[9]  Jian Chen,et al.  Effects of surface displayed targeting ligand GE11 on liposome distribution and extravasation in tumor. , 2014, Molecular pharmaceutics.

[10]  F. Bordi,et al.  Dimensional scale effects on surface enhanced Raman scattering efficiency of self-assembled silver nanoparticle clusters , 2014 .

[11]  C. Toniolo,et al.  Aggregation propensity of Aib homo‐peptides of different length: an insight from molecular dynamics simulations , 2014, Journal of peptide science : an official publication of the European Peptide Society.

[12]  C. Toniolo,et al.  Fibrils or globules? Tuning the morphology of peptide aggregates from helical building blocks. , 2013, The journal of physical chemistry. B.

[13]  Tiffany R Walsh,et al.  GolP-CHARMM: First-Principles Based Force Fields for the Interaction of Proteins with Au(111) and Au(100). , 2013, Journal of chemical theory and computation.

[14]  Moreno Meneghetti,et al.  Plasmonic nanostructures for SERRS multiplexed identification of tumor-associated antigens. , 2012, Small.

[15]  Philippe H. Hünenberger,et al.  A GROMOS Parameter Set for Vicinal Diether Functions: Properties of Polyethyleneoxide and Polyethyleneglycol. , 2012, Journal of chemical theory and computation.

[16]  Nancy L Oleinick,et al.  EGFR-mediated intracellular delivery of Pc 4 nanoformulation for targeted photodynamic therapy of cancer: in vitro studies. , 2012, Nanomedicine : nanotechnology, biology, and medicine.

[17]  A. Barth,et al.  Vibrational coupling between helices influences the amide I infrared absorption of proteins: application to bacteriorhodopsin and rhodopsin. , 2012, The journal of physical chemistry. B.

[18]  Zhaofeng Zhou,et al.  Correlation between the band gap, elastic modulus, Raman shift and melting point of CdS, ZnS, and CdSe semiconductors and their size dependency. , 2012, Nanoscale.

[19]  A. Hagooly,et al.  Labeling approaches for the GE11 peptide, an epidermal growth factor receptor biomarker , 2011 .

[20]  S. Fürst,et al.  Image-guided tumor-selective radioiodine therapy of liver cancer after systemic nonviral delivery of the sodium iodide symporter gene. , 2011, Human gene therapy.

[21]  D. Schaffert,et al.  Disconnecting the yin and yang relation of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mediated delivery: a fully synthetic, EGFR-targeted gene transfer system avoiding receptor activation. , 2011, Human gene therapy.

[22]  L. Liz‐Marzán,et al.  Controlled assembly of plasmonic colloidal nanoparticle clusters. , 2011, Nanoscale.

[23]  Nastassja A. Lewinski,et al.  A new era for cancer treatment: gold-nanoparticle-mediated thermal therapies. , 2011, Small.

[24]  Zonghai Li,et al.  Peptide ligand-mediated liposome distribution and targeting to EGFR expressing tumor in vivo. , 2008, International journal of pharmaceutics.

[25]  Vincent M Rotello,et al.  Gold nanoparticles in delivery applications. , 2008, Advanced drug delivery reviews.

[26]  Prashant K. Jain,et al.  Plasmonic photothermal therapy (PPTT) using gold nanoparticles , 2008, Lasers in Medical Science.

[27]  P. Cummings,et al.  Molecular simulations of stretching gold nanowires in solvents , 2007, Nanotechnology.

[28]  M. Parrinello,et al.  Canonical sampling through velocity rescaling. , 2007, The Journal of chemical physics.

[29]  Ming Yao,et al.  Identification and characterization of a novel peptide ligand of epidermal growth factor receptor for targeted delivery of therapeutics , 2005, FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

[30]  Chris Oostenbrink,et al.  A biomolecular force field based on the free enthalpy of hydration and solvation: The GROMOS force‐field parameter sets 53A5 and 53A6 , 2004, J. Comput. Chem..

[31]  Michele Follen,et al.  Real-time vital optical imaging of precancer using anti-epidermal growth factor receptor antibodies conjugated to gold nanoparticles. , 2003, Cancer research.

[32]  T. Darden,et al.  A smooth particle mesh Ewald method , 1995 .

[33]  T. Darden,et al.  Particle mesh Ewald: An N⋅log(N) method for Ewald sums in large systems , 1993 .

[34]  H. Berendsen,et al.  Molecular dynamics with coupling to an external bath , 1984 .

[35]  W. Kabsch,et al.  Dictionary of protein secondary structure: Pattern recognition of hydrogen‐bonded and geometrical features , 1983, Biopolymers.

[36]  L. Litti,et al.  A surface enhanced Raman scattering based colloid nanosensor for developing therapeutic drug monitoring. , 2019, Journal of colloid and interface science.

[37]  Juan J. Giner-Casares,et al.  Inorganic nanoparticles for biomedicine: where materials scientists meet medical research , 2016 .

[38]  Antje Sommer,et al.  Principles Of Fluorescence Spectroscopy , 2016 .

[39]  D. Astruc,et al.  Gold nanoparticles: assembly, supramolecular chemistry, quantum-size-related properties, and applications toward biology, catalysis, and nanotechnology. , 2004, Chemical reviews.