Carbon nanotubes as gene carriers: Focus on internalization pathways related to functionalization and properties
Abstract Carbon nanotubes represent promising transporters for delivery of DNA and other biomolecules into living cells. Various methods of CNTs surface functionalization have been developed. These are essential to improve CNTs dispersibility and permit their interactions with biological structures that broaden their use in advanced biomedical applications. The present review discusses the different single walled carbon nanotubes and multiwalled carbon nanotubes functionalization methods, leading to the formation of optimized and functionalized-CNT complexes with DNA. F-CNTs are recognized as efficient and promising gene carriers. Emphasis is then placed on the processes used by f-CNTs/DNA …
Nanovectorization of TRAIL with single wall carbon nanotubes enhances tumor cell killing
International audience; Tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL or Apo2L) is a member of the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) superfamily. This type II transmembrane protein is able to bound specifically to cancer cell receptors (i.e., TRAIL-R1 (or DR4) and TRAIL-R2 (or DR5)) and to induce apoptosis without being toxic for healthy cells. Because membrane-bound TRAIL induces stronger receptor aggregation and apoptosis than soluble TRAIL, we proposed here to vectorize TRAIL using single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) to mimic membrane TRAIL. Owing to their exceptional and revolutional properties, carbon nanotubes, especially SWCNTs, are used in a wide range of physical or,…
Human-based evidence for the therapeutic potential of arginase inhibitors in cardiovascular diseases
Arginase is a ubiquitous enzyme that regulates polyamine- and nitric-oxide-requiring vascular functions. It is well-established that, in mammals, arginase overactivation contributes to endothelial dysfunction, a hallmark of cardiovascular diseases. The pharmacological potential of arginase inhibition for improving vascular function is largely supported by a wide range of data from animal studies. However, caution is required before extrapolating animal data to humans because interspecies differences in arginase expression and localization have been observed. For this reason, this review presents the existing arguments from human data in favor of a role of arginase in cardiovascular diseases…
Selective Inhibition of STAT3 with Respect to STAT1: Insights from Molecular Dynamics and Ensemble Docking Simulations
STAT3 protein, which is known to be involved in cancer development, is a promising target for anticancer therapy. Successful inhibitors of STAT3 should not affect an activity of closely related protein STAT1, which makes their development challenging. The mechanisms of selectivity of several existing STAT3 inhibitors are not clear. In this work, we studied molecular mechanisms of selectivity of 13 experimentally tested STAT3 inhibitors by means of extensive molecular dynamics and ensemble docking simulations. It is shown that all studied inhibitors bind to the large part of the protein surface in an unspecific statistical manner. The binding to the dimerization interface of the SH2 domain, …
Carbon nanotube – Protamine hybrid: Evaluation of DNA cell penetration
International audience; Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) represent a class of nanomaterials with important potential for biomedical and biotechnological applications. CNT based vectorization is an emerging approach to the transport of nucleic acid through cell membrane but limited by detachment of DNA and degradation process. To increase DNA internalization, it was proved that cationic functionalized CNT was essential. In such a way, protamine efficiently used in several transfection processes is a cationic protein which was never associated to CNT.We propose here a novel nanovector based on single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) functionalized by protamine. Our results based on qPCR methods clearly…