Public release date: 3-Jul-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Evan Lerner elerner@upenn.edu 215-573-6604 University of Pennsylvania

PHILADELPHIA Finding biocompatible carriers that can get drugs to their targets in the body involves significant challenges. Beyond practical concerns of manufacturing and loading these vehicles, the carriers must work effectively with the drug and be safe to consume. Vesicles, hollow capsules shaped like double-walled bubbles, are ideal candidates, as the body naturally produces similar structures to move chemicals from one place to another. Finding the right molecules to assemble into capsules, however, remains difficult.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have now shown a new approach for making vesicles and fine-tuning their shapes. By starting with a protein that is found in sunflower seeds, they used genetic engineering to make a variety of protein molecules that assemble into vesicles and other useful structures.

Daniel A. Hammer, Alfred G. and Meta A. Ennis Professor of Bioengineering, graduate student Kevin Vargo and research scientist Ranganath Parthasarathy of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science conducted the research.

Their work was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"To our knowledge, this is the first time a vesicle has been made from a recombinant protein," Hammer said.

Recombinant proteins are the products of a well-established technique that involves introducing a designed gene sequence into a host organism in most cases, the bacterium E. coli in order to get that organism to make a protein it would not normally produce.

Hammer's group worked for nearly a decade to find a protein that was biocompatible, could be produced through recombinant methods and, most important, could be induced to form vesicles.

"The molecule we identified is called oleosin," Hammer said. "It's a surfactant protein found in sunflower and sesame seeds."

Excerpt from:
Penn engineers convert a natural plant protein into drug-delivery vehicles

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