A surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technique was developed as an online screening method to identify effective adsorbents for the peptide NH2-Cys-Thr-Trp-Trp-COOH (CW-4). To validate the SPR technique, several linear polymers containing amino acid residues were synthesized as models of their corresponding adsorbents. SPR screening of all the linear polymers demonstrated that the linear polymer containing phenylalanine residues (PPhe) exhibited the highest affinity for CW-4 among the polymers tested. In accordance with the screening results from SPR, the adsorbent containing phenylalanine (APhe) exhibited the highest adsorption capacity for CW-4. An interesting observation was that the amounts of CW-4 adsorbed on 3 adsorbents were quite small, even though both SPR and isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) experiments indicated the presence of interactions between CW-4 and the three polymers. A kinetic analysis performed using SPR technology suggested such a phenomenon was ascribed to the poor stability of the CW-4/polymer complexes; that is, CW-4 associates with the polymers quickly, but it also dissociated quickly. The combined results suggested that SPR was a promising tool to identify the optimal adsorbent for peptides, analyze the interactions contributing to adsorption and explain adsorption phenomena using polymer models.
Linear polymers bearing the same functional groups as their corresponding adsorbents could be used as models to study the adsorption behaviors.However,the relationships between the data from model study and real adsorption have not been fully interpreted.In this work,three adsorbent(CP1-Zn2+,CP2-Zn2+ and CP3-Zn2+) and their corresponding linear models(P1-Zn2+,P2-Zn2+ and P3-Zn2+) were synthesized.The affinity constants(Ka) between these models and target peptide DFLAE(DE5) were obtained by isothermal titration calorimetry(ITC).Adsorption capacities and adsorption affinities were carried out by static adsorption and adsorption isotherm.The qualitative and quantitative relationships between affinity constants from model study and the real adsorption data were explored.This study was significant to bridge the model study with the real adsorption.
QIAO YiTao LI PingLin ZHAO JianXin WANG Wei YUAN Zhi
Contact guidance and external force field are two important factors that influence cell orientation.Microgroove-like patterns on PDMS substrates were fabricated using soft-lithography,and the effects of gravitational field direction relative to the pattern,on L929 cell orientation were investigated.The majority of cells were aligned along the grooves when gravity was parallel to the groove direction,because of contact guidance.When gravity was perpendicular to the groove direction,cell alignment decreased noticeably.Although contact guidance induced by the pattern played a dominant role in determining cell orientation,gravity also had an important influence when the field direction was perpendicular to the groove direction.No synergistic influence on cell alignment was observed when the field direction was parallel to the groove direction.
In this study, novel liver targeted doxorubicin (DOX) loaded alginate (ALG) nanoparticles were prepared by CaCl2 crosslinking method. Glycyrrhetinic acid (GA, a liver targeted molecule) modified alginate (GA-ALG) was synthesized in a heterogeneous system, and the structure of GA-ALG and the substitu-tion degree of GA were analyzed by 1H NMR, FT-IR and elemental analysis. The drug release profile under the simulated physiological condition and cytotoxicity experiments of drug-loaded GA-ALG nanoparticles were carried out in vitro. Transmission electron micrographs (TEM) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) analysis showed that drug-loaded GA-ALG nanoparticles have spherical shape structure with the mean hydrodynamic diameter around 214 ± 11 nm. The drug release was shown to last 20 days, and the MTT assay suggested that drug-loaded GA-ALG nanoparticles had a distinct kill-ing effect on 7703 hepatocellular carcinoma cells.
