Hyperosmotic treatment synergistically boost efficiency of cell-permeable peptides

Abstract

// Hu Wang 1, 2, 4 , Ming Zhang 1, 2 , Fanhui Zeng 3 , Changbai Liu 1, 2, 4 1 The Institute of Cell Therapy, China Three Gorges University, Yichang, China 2 Medical School, Department of Pathology, Biology and Immunology, China Three Gorges University, Yichang, China 3 The Central Hospital of Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Enshi, China 4 Hubei Key Laboratory of Tumor Microenvironment and Immunotherapy, China Three Gorges University, Yichang, China Correspondence to: Hu Wang, email: biomed_wang@yahoo.com Changbai Liu, email: cbliu@ctgu.edu.cn Keywords: cell penetrating peptide, hypertonic molecules, penetration, osmoprotectant Received: February 25, 2016      Accepted: April 11, 2016      Published: May 18, 2016 ABSTRACT Therapeutics delivery into cells has been hurdled due to the barrier of cytoplasmic membrane. Although cell penetrating peptide (CPP) can potentially serve as an intracellular drug delivery vehicle, the application of CPP-based delivery is limited because the unsatisfactory delivery efficiency of CPP conjugated potent cargos is challenging their applications in present. Thus, the development of strategies for enhancing the penetrating efficiency of CPP would therefore urgent need to be explored to increase the scope of potential applications. We report here the effects of glucose, sucrose and manntiol (abbreviated as GSM) combination facilitating the penetration efficiency of CPP peptide alone or CPP-GFP (green fluorescence protein) conjugation in cultured cell lines or primary cells. Moreover, osmoprotectants glycerol and glycine supplementation help cells cope with the stress from GSM combination. Thus, our present study suggests that GSM combination in the presence of osmoprotectant can work as a new strategy for CPP penetration enhancement.