Anannya Roy, Amity University Kolkata
Protein replacement therapy is a medical treatment that supplements or replaces a protein in a patient in whom this is absent or deficient. These are a very powerful class of drugs and are highly selective and specific in their targets. This makes them a very useful tool in modern science. However, just like nothing in the world is perfect, this therapy as well has certain limitations. Proteins are easily degraded by the enzymes present in our body or filtered from the blood by kidneys.
Recently researchers at ACS Central Science have engineered a special type of RBC (red blood cell) carriers with the help of a honey bee peptide that when stimulated by light could release therapeutic proteins. This strategy is not only limited to RBC carriers but is also applicable to nano transporters and micro transporters composed of the lipid bilayer membrane.
Because of the above-stated reasons, protein drugs are unstable in the body. To produce desired outcomes they are given in high amounts, which cause side effects. Degradation has been prevented by enclosing the proteins within carriers like liposomes, nanoparticles and RBCs, but the biggest challenge has been how to release the products in proper place and time.
In the paper, Brianna Vickerman, David Lawrence and their colleagues engineered a special kind of RBCs that would release proteins at certain regions of the body, only when triggered by a particular wavelength of light.
Melittin is a component of European honey bee venom. The researchers embedded this peptide into the membrane of the red blood cells (RBC). Under normal circumstances, this Melittin would degrade the cells but here they were modified in such a way that they’ll do so only when illuminated by the light of a certain wavelength. Thrombin, a blood-clotting enzyme that stops bleeding was inserted into these special RBCs and injected into mice ears. A small portion was illuminated and upon examination, it was found that blood clotting occurred only in the illuminated sections.
This research provides a lot of insights into how Protein therapy can be modified in ways that it would be useful to a wide range of the population.
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Citation- https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscentsci.0c01151
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