2024 AIChE Annual Meeting
Influence of Particle z-Potential and Experimental Procedure on Protein Corona Formation and Multicomponent Aggregation
Attention has been placed on drug delivery systems (DDSs) with the hope that they can achieve targeted drug delivery all while reducing toxic side effects. Yet it must be noted that a variety of factors reduce DDSs from being optimal. Two such factors are protein corona formation and aggregation, which both result in a decreased circulation half-life of the drug delivery particles and eventually lead to uptake and filtration of the particles by the spleen and liver. For that reason, surface modifications should be made to particles in order to minimize their protein corona formation and aggregation. Reducing these factors will optimize the particles for DDSs. This research modified polystyrene particles utilizing multi-arm and linear polyethylene glycol (PEG) in order to study their influence on aggregation and protein corona formation. It was determined that multi-arm PEGs led to more aggregation than linear PEGs due to the changes in zeta potential from their unreacted end groups. This may lead to multi-arm PEGs having shorter circulation half-lives. Additionally, the formation and composition of protein coronas were studied after different washing techniques to underscore the criticality of studying protein corona formation in undiluted blood plasma.