scholarly journals GST-TAT-SOD: Cell Permeable Bifunctional Antioxidant Enzyme—A Potential Selective Radioprotector

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianru Pan ◽  
Huocong He ◽  
Ying Su ◽  
Guangjin Zheng ◽  
Junxin Wu ◽  
...  

Superoxide dismutase (SOD) fusion of TAT was proved to be radioprotective in our previous work. On that basis, a bifunctional recombinant protein which was the fusion of glutathione S-transferase (GST), SOD, and TAT was constructed and named GST-TAT-SOD. Herein we report the investigation of the cytotoxicity, cell-penetrating activity, and in vitro radioprotective effect of GST-TAT-SOD compared with wild SOD, single-function recombinant protein SOD-TAT, and amifostine. We demonstrated that wild SOD had little radioprotective effect on irradiated L-02 and Hep G2 cells while amifostine was protective to both cell lines. SOD-TAT or GST-TAT-SOD pretreatment 3 h prior to radiation protects irradiated normal liver cells against radiation damage by eliminating intracellular excrescent superoxide, reducing cellular MDA level, enhancing cellular antioxidant ability and colony formation ability, and reducing apoptosis rate. Compared with SOD-TAT, GST-TAT-SOD was proved to have better protective effect on irradiated normal liver cells and minimal effect on irradiated hepatoma cells. Besides, GST-TAT-SOD was safe for normal cells and effectively transduced into different organs in mice, including the brain. The characteristics of this protein suggest that it may be a potential radioprotective agent in cancer therapy better than amifostine. Fusion of two antioxidant enzymes and cell-penetrating peptides is potentially valuable in the development of radioprotective agent.

2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 51-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ananda Baskaran Venkatachalam ◽  
Scott Michael Livingstone ◽  
Qianni Hu ◽  
Ayush Ray ◽  
Caroline Wood ◽  
...  

Background/Purpose: Liver transplantation is the treatment of choice in patients with end-stage liver disease. During liver transplantation, ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) occurs, which is an inevitable consequence of the transplantation process. To reduce the extent of cellular injury, one of the proteins that have been extensively investigated is heme oxygenase 1 (HO-1), which plays an important role in protecting the organs against IRI. The aim of this study was to introduce an active and functional HO-1 protein conjugated to a cell-penetrating peptide (CPP) in vitro and ex vivo into liver cells in hypothermic and anoxic conditions and to assert its cytoprotective effects. Methods: We generated an enzymatically active soluble (s)HO-1-CPP recombinant protein. The ability of the sHO-1-CPP protein to penetrate McA-RH7777, Clone 9, and Hep G2 cells, primary hepatocytes, and Kupffer and human umbilical vein endothelial cells in vitro, as well as its ability to penetrate a whole liver ex vivo under hypothermic and anoxic conditions, was assessed. An in vitro hypoxia-reoxygenation (HR) model was used to determine the cytoprotective effect of the sHO-1-CPP protein. Results: We showed that our recombinant protein sHO-1-CPP can cross cell membranes into rodent and human liver cells in vitro, and the results were further validated ex vivo, where rodent livers were perfused with an organ preservation solution supplemented with sHO-1-CPP under anoxic and hypothermic conditions. Immunohistochemistry revealed an intracellular localization of sHO-1-CPP in zones 1-3 of the perfused livers. The CPP did not exert any significant toxicity on the cells. Treating cells with sHO-1-CPP showed significant cytoprotection in the in vitro HR model. Conclusions: Our findings show that the recombinant protein sHO-1-CPP can be successfully delivered to cells of a whole organ in an ex vivo hypothermic and anoxic perfusion model and that it provides cytoprotection to hepatocytes in an in vitro HR model. These results hold great potential for future repair and protection of donor organs. Future experiments are planned to confirm these data in in vivo models of IRI.


2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (11) ◽  
pp. 1283-1298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saba Davoodi ◽  
Azam Bolhassani ◽  
Seyed Mehdi Sadat ◽  
Shiva Irani

Pharmaceutics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 1618
Author(s):  
Kristina Kiisholts ◽  
Kaido Kurrikoff ◽  
Piret Arukuusk ◽  
Ly Porosk ◽  
Maire Peters ◽  
...  

Gene therapy is a powerful tool for the development of new treatment strategies for various conditions, by aiming to transport biologically active nucleic acids into diseased cells. To achieve that goal, we used highly potential delivery vectors, cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs), as oligonucleotide carriers for the development of a therapeutic approach for endometriosis and cancer. Despite marked differences, both of these conditions still exhibit similarities, like excessive, uncoordinated, and autonomous cellular proliferation and invasion, accompanied by overlapping gene expression patterns. Thus, in the current study, we investigated the therapeutic effects of CPP and siRNA nanoparticles using in vitro models of benign endometriosis and malignant glioblastoma. We demonstrated that CPPs PepFect6 and NickFect70 are highly effective in transfecting cell lines, primary cell cultures, and three-dimensional spheroids. CPP nanoparticles are capable of inducing siRNA-specific knockdown of therapeutic genes, ribonucleotide reductase subunit M2 (RRM2), and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which results in the reduction of in vitro cellular proliferation, invasion, and migration. In addition, we proved that it is possible to achieve synergistic suppression of endometriosis cellular proliferation and invasion by combining gene therapy and hormonal treatment approaches by co-administering CPP/siRNA nanoparticles together with the endometriosis-drug danazol. We suggest a novel target, RRM2, for endometriosis therapy and as a proof-of-concept, we propose a CPP-mediated gene therapy approach for endometriosis and cancer.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 1856
Author(s):  
Qi Shuai ◽  
Yue Cai ◽  
Guangkuo Zhao ◽  
Xuanrong Sun

On account of their excellent capacity to significantly improve the bioavailability and solubility of chemotherapy drugs, amphiphilic block copolymer-based micelles have been widely utilized for chemotherapy drug delivery. In order to further improve the antitumor ability and to also reduce undesired side effects of drugs, cell-penetrating peptides have been used to functionalize the surface of polymer micelles endowed with the ability to target tumor tissues. Herein, we first synthesized functional polyethylene glycol-polylactic acid (PEG-PLA) tethered with maleimide at the PEG section of the block polymer, which was further conjugated with a specific peptide, the transactivating transcriptional activator (TAT), with an approved capacity of aiding translocation across the plasma membrane. Then, TAT-conjugated, paclitaxel-loaded nanoparticles were self-assembled into stable nanoparticles with a favorable size of 20 nm, and displayed a significantly increased cytotoxicity, due to their enhanced accumulation via peptide-mediated cellular association in human breast cancer cells (MCF-7) in vitro. But when further used in vivo, TAT-NP-PTX showed an acceleration of the drug’s plasma clearance rate compared with NP-PTX, and therefore weakened its antitumor activities in the mice model, because of its positive charge, its elimination by the endoplasmic reticulum system more quickly, and its targeting effect on normal cells leading towards being more toxic. So further modification of TAT-NP-PTX to shield TAT peptide’s positive charges may be a hot topic to overcome the present dilemma.


RSC Advances ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (43) ◽  
pp. 24084-24093 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qi Zhang ◽  
Jing Wang ◽  
Hao Zhang ◽  
Dan Liu ◽  
Linlin Ming ◽  
...  

Hydrophobic cell penetrating peptide PFVYLI-modified liposomes have been developed for the targeted delivery of PTX into tumors.


Peptides ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 87 ◽  
pp. 50-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Azam Bolhassani ◽  
Behnaz Sadat Jafarzade ◽  
Golnaz Mardani

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