Protein capsules - Research Progress

Protein capsules

2022-04-09

Proteins are considered as one of the most important highly reproducible and monodisperse building blocks with specific functions in life sciences and material science. Protein capsules and their hybrids composed of protein-polymer conjugates have been intensively explored in drug delivery, catalysis and mimicking cell functions. We presented a facile, universal and efficient method to fabricate the diverse protein capsules, independent on the molecular weight (Mw), isoelectric points (IEP), wettability, amino acid sequence and functional domains of enumerated proteins (Fig. 1). Furthermore, their ability to store the original protein functionality was demonstrated, which was mainly embodied in their enzyme responsiveness and good biocompatibility in vitro and in vivo. We believe that these protein capsules have multiple potential applications such as in drug delivery, tissue engineering, catalysis and other application fields. This work was published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 2019, 39209-39218.

Fig. 1. Schematic illustration of (a) TA-CaCO3 particle synthesis, (b) protein deposition and crosslinking, (c) removing the core to generate the protein capsules.