earticle

영어

Protein nanoparticle is one of effective vehicles for drug delivery because of its biocompatibility and biodegradable property. Among various proteins, human serum albumin (HSA) is widely used as building block of protein nanoparticles because it is abundant, stable, nonantigenic, and available for covalent modification due to its functional groups. HSA is introduced to cells mainly by receptor-mediated endocytosis, however, HSA nanoparticles have limited application to cells only having albumin receptor. In this study, recombinant 30Kc19, cell penetrating protein originated from silkworm was used to overcome this limitation. 30Kc19-HSA nanoparticles were formed by dropwise addition of ethanol to aqueous protein solution with continuous stirring and then were crosslinked using glutaraldehyde. 30Kc19-HSA nanoparticles had uniform spherical shape and stability in phosphate buffered saline and cell culture media. 30Kc19-HSA nanoparticles had negligible toxicity to animal cells. Successful uptake of 30Kc19-HSA nanoparticles to HeLa and human fibroblast cells was observed using fluorescence microscopy. In addition, transfection vector loaded 30Kc19-HSA protein nanoparticles had successfully delivered pDsRED2 gene to cells. It is expected that 30Kc19-HSA protein nanoparticles could be used as versatile tool for drug delivery to various cells.