Enzyme cleavable nanoparticles from peptide based triblock copolymers

Abstract

A solid-phase synthesis based approach towards protease cleavable polystyrene–peptide–polystyrene triblock copolymers and their formulation to nanoparticulate systems is presented. These nanoparticles are suitable for the optical detection of an enzyme and have the potential for application as a drug delivery system. Two different peptide sequences, one cleaved by trypsin (GFF), the other by hepsin (RQLRVVGG), a protease overexpressed in early stages of prostate cancer, are used as the central part of the triblock. For optical detection a fluorophore–quencher pair is introduced around the cleavage sequence. The solid phase synthesis is conduced such that two identical sequences are synthesized from one branching point. Eventually, carboxy-terminated polystyrene is introduced into the peptide synthesizer and coupled to the amino-termini of the branched sequence. Upon cleavage, a fragment is released from the triblock copolymer, which has the potential for use in drug delivery applications. Conducting the whole synthesis on a solid phase in the peptide synthesizer avoids solubility issues and post-synthetic purification steps. Due to the hydrophobic PS-chains, the copolymer can easily be formulated to form nanoparticles using a nanoprecipitation process. Incubation of the nanoparticles with the respective enzymes leads to a significant increase of the fluorescence from the incorporated fluorophore, thereby indicating cleavage of the peptide sequence and decomposition of the particles.