Researchers at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) and Sungkyunkwan University have developed a platform technology using charged peptides that control the release of therapeutic protein from the drug delivery vehicles, significantly prolonging their serum half-life in the body. These peptides can modulate the electrostatic interactions between therapeutic protein and drug delivery vehicles. 

Therapeutic proteins are widely used to treat various human diseases due to their high specificity and low toxicity. However, therapeutic proteins are eliminated from the body upon injection, resulting in a short duration of efficacy, which requires repeated injections and increases the cost of treatment. To address this issue, hydrogels have been developed as drug delivery systems to prolong the efficacy of protein drugs. However, current methods of using electrostatic interactions to control the release of these proteins don't work well for weakly charged proteins.

The research team found that a new approach involving genetic fusion of a highly charged protein segment, known as a "charge booster tag," can help control the interaction between therapeutic proteins and injectable hydrogels. By introducing a positive or negative charge booster tag to urate oxidase (UOX), a therapeutic protein used to treat gout, researchers were able to create UOX variants with varying net charges. When using a positively-charged injectable hydrogel, both the in vitro release rate and in vivo serum half-life of the UOX variants were found to be correlated with the net negative charge. This new method resulted in a much longer serum half-life.

These findings suggest that charge booster tags could be a promising new approach to controlling the release of therapeutic proteins, and could have significant implications for drug delivery in the future. The platform technology developed by the GIST research team is expected to be applied to various types of protein drugs, and will contribute to reducing the inconvenience of repeated injections and the cost of treatment.

Design of charged peptide (charge booster tag) for controlled release of therapeutic protein from chraged hydrogels
Copyright 2022, Wiley-VCH.

[Reference]

Kim et al., (2022) “Charge Booster Tags for Controlled Release of Therapeutics from a Therapeutic Carrier”. Advanced Functional Materials

[Main Author]

Seoungkyun Kim (Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology)

Dong Hee Kim (Sungkyunkwan University)

Jinhwan Cho (Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology)

Jaeyun Kim (Sungkyunkwan University)

Inchan Kwon (Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology)

* Contact : Professor Inchan Kwon (e-mail: inchan@gist.ac.kr)