Title
One-pot synthesis and characterization of ovalbumin-conjugated gold nanoparticles: A comparative study of adjuvanticity against the physical mixture of ovalbumin and gold nanoparticles
Author
yuhua Yang, Yibang Zhang, Aneesh Thakur, Ruyan Li, Han Xu, Zhixin Wang, Mahdi Ghavami, Zhigang Tu, Hanqing Liu
Year
2019
Journal
International Journal of Pharmaceutics
Abstract
Only few adjuvants are licensed for use in humans and there is a need to develop safe and improved vaccine adjuvants. In this study, we report the one-pot synthesis of antigen ovalbumin (OVA)-conjugated gold nanoparticles (OVA@GNPs). A systematical study was performed by comparing OVA@GNPs with the simple mixture of OVA and gold nanoparticles (OVA+GNPs), including their physiochemical properties through spectrometric and electrophoretic analysis, in vitro stability, cytotoxicity and cellular uptake, and in vivo humoral immune responses following subcutaneous and transcutaneous immunization in mice. The results demonstrate a much stronger interaction between protein and GNPs in OVA@GNPs than OVA+GNPs, which makes OVA@GNPs more stable under in vitro conditions than OVA+GNPs with the ability to induce 4 times higher OVA-specific serum IgG titers following subcutaneous immunization. We also show the dose sparing of OVA@GNPs, as the dosage for aluminum adjuvant required to reach to an equivalent OVA-specific antibody titer was almost five times higher than OVA@GNPs. However, we found that the co-administration of small-sized GNPs had a limited ability for the transcutaneous delivery of OVA. These results demonstrate the potential application of one-pot synthesis approach for producing antigen protein-conjugated gold nanoparticles for vaccine delivery.
Instrument
J-815
Keywords
Circular dichroism, Secondary structure, Protein stability, Nanostructures, Biochemistry, Materials, Pharmaceutical