BACKGROUND Recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEPO) is considered to be one of the most pivotal pharmaceutical drugs in the market because of its clinical application in the treatment of anemia-associated disorders worldwide. However, like other therapeutic proteins, it does not have suitable pharmacokinetic properties for it to be administrated at least two to three times per week. Chemoselect...

Photodynamic therapy is emerging as a viable modality for the treatment of many cancers. A limiting factor in its use against intracavity tumors such as disseminated ovarian cancer is insufficient selectivity of the photosensitizer for tumor compared with normal tissue. We report on an approach to improve tumor targeting by exploiting differences between cell types and by chemical modification ...

Our recent studies on PEG-Hb [poly(ethylene glycol)-Hb] conjugates generated by thiolation-mediated maleimide-chemistry based PEGylation demonstrated that the vasoactivity of the PEG-Hb conjugates is a function of the configuration of the PEG chains on the surface of the protein and is independent of the PEG/protein-mass ratio [Manjula, A. G. Tsai, Intaglietta, H.-C. Tsai, Ho, Smith, Perumalsam...

Plant virus-based nanoparticles (VNPs) offer a bioinspired approach to the delivery of drugs and imaging agents. The chemical addressability, biocompatibility, scalable manufacturability VNPs make them promising alternative synthetic platforms. However, VNPs, just like other proteinaceous or (NPs), are readily recognized cleared by immune system mechanisms such as opsonization phagocytosis. Shi...

PEGylated and surface-tethered proteins are used in a variety of biotechnological applications, but traditional methods offer little control over the placement functionalization sites on protein. Fortunately, recent experimental functionalize protein at any location amino acid sequence, so question becomes one selecting site that will result best function. This work shows how molecular simulati...

BSA and lysozyme have been transformed into macroinitiators for living radical polymerisation and used to produce well-defined bioconjugates which can be fluorescently labelled providing a versatile strategy for the preparation of bioconjugates which is complementary to traditional PEGylation.

A strained aza-dibenzocyclooctyne was prepared via a high-yielding synthetic route. Copper-free, strain-promoted click reaction with azides showed excellent kinetics, and a functionalised aza-cyclooctyne was applied in fast and efficient PEGylation of enzymes.

An efficient and bench-stable reagent was synthesized for direct and covalent introduction of tetrazines onto target protein or virus surfaces, which can be further modified based on tetrazine-ene ligation to achieve fluorescence labelling or PEGylation under mild conditions.

Interaction with platelets has been recognized as a concern in the development of liposomeencapsulated hemoglobin as an oxygen carrier. This reaction causes a significant drop in circulating platelets in a rapid and transient fashion. We studied the effect of lipid bilayer charge on the magnitude of drop in circulating platelets. We also investigated the effect of post-inserted PEG-lipid on thi...

One disadvantage of vesicular stomatitis virus G (VSV-G) pseudotyped lentivirus vectors for clinical application is inactivation of the vector by human serum complement. To prevent this, monomethoxypoly(ethylene) glycol was conjugated to a VSV-G-human immunodeficiency virus vector expressing Escherichia coli beta-galactosidase. The modification did not affect transduction efficiency in vitro an...