Nanoparticles (NPs) may help to protect drugs including new classes of therapeutic biomolecules (e.g. nucleic acids, proteins) from enzymatic degradation as well as from undesirable interactions with biological components, and efficiently transport them into the site of their therapeutic action. Different kind of nanoparticles has been synthesized for these purposes (1). We will focus on the polymer nanoparticles such as dendrimers and on their potential to be used as carriers for delivery of HIV synthetic peptides into dendritic cells serving as antigen-presenting cells, and thus, as a possible HIV vaccination platform. Since the cell membrane represents one of the most significant obstacles on the route of delivering cargo into the intracellular space, the analysis of biomembrane interactions is of utmost importance. This can be accomplished by using various biomimetic membrane models such as Langmuir monolayers and lipid vesicles. We have demonstrated that interaction between model membranes and peptides is stronger when being complexed with NPs than for uncomplexed (free) peptides. The interaction depended on the lipid composition; polyethyleneglycol modified lipids made this interaction weaker (2).

References: (1) Peña-González C E, Pedziwiatr-Werbicka E, Shcharbin D, Guerrero-Beltrán C, Abashkin V, Loznikova S, Jiménez J L, Ángeles Muñoz-Fernández M, Bryszewska M, Gómez R, Sánchez-Nieves J, Javier de la Mata F. Gold nanoparticles stabilized by cationic carbosilane dendrons: synthesis and biological properties. Dalton Transactions. 2017; 46: 8736-8745. Available from: doi: 10.1039/C6DT03791G. (2) Melikishvili S, Poturnayova A, Ionov M, Bryszewska M, Vary T, Cirak J, Muñoz-Fernández M Á, Gomez-Ramirez R, Javier de la Mata F, Hianik T. The effect of polyethylene glycol-modified lipids on the interaction of HIV-1 derived peptide-dendrimer complexes with lipid membranes.Biochim Biophys Acta. 2016; 1858(12):3005-3016. Available from: doi:10.1016/j.bbamem.2016.09.005.

Financing: This work was supported by Slovak Research and Development Agency, APVV (projects No. APVV-14-0267 and SK-PL-2015-0021), Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education and VEGA 1/0152/15.