NYU
Researchers Break Nano Barrier
To Engineer the First Protein Microfiber
New Material Advances Tissue Engineering and
Drug Delivery
Researchers at the New York University Polytechnic School
of Engineering have broken new ground in the development of proteins that form
specialized fibers used in medicine and nanotechnology. For as long as
scientists have been able to create new proteins that are capable of
self-assembling into fibers, their work has taken place on the nanoscale. For
the first time, this achievement has been realized on the microscale—a leap of
magnitude in size that presents significant new opportunities for using
engineered protein fibers.
Jin Kim Montclare, an associate professor of
chemical and biomolecular engineering at the NYU School of Engineering, led a
group of researchers who published the results of successful trials in the
creation of engineered microfiber proteins in the journal Biomacromolecules.
Many materials used in medicine and nanotechnology rely on
proteins engineered to form fibers with specific properties. For example, the
scaffolds used in tissue engineering depend on engineered fibers, as do the
nanowires used in biosensors. These fibers can also be bound with small
molecules of therapeutic compounds and used in drug delivery.
Montclare and her collaborators began their experiments
with the intention of designing nanoscale proteins bound with the cancer
therapeutic curcumin. They successfully created a novel, self-assembling
nanoscale protein, including a hydrophobic pore capable of binding small
molecules. To their surprise, after incubating the fibers with curcumin, the
protein not only continued to assemble, but did so to a degree that the fibers
crossed the diameter barrier from the nanoscale to the microscale, akin to the
diameter of collagen or spider silk.
“This was a surprising and thrilling achievement,” said
Montclare, explaining that this kind of diameter increase in the presence of
small molecules is unprecedented. “A microscale fiber that is capable of
delivering a small molecule, whether it be a therapeutic compound or other material,
is a major step forward.”
Montclare explained that biomaterials embedded with small
molecules could be used to construct dual-purpose scaffolds for tissue
engineering or to deliver certain drugs more efficiently, especially those that
are less effective in an aqueous environment. Using microscopy, the team was
able to observe the fibers in three dimensions and to confirm that the
curcumin, which fluoresces when bound to structural protein, was distributed
homogeneously throughout the fiber.
Despite the enormity of the jump from nano- to microscale,
the research team believes they can devise even larger fibers. The next step,
Montclare says, is developing proteins that can assemble on the milliscale,
creating fibers large enough to see with the naked eye. “It’s even possible to
imagine generating hair out of self-assembly,” she says.
Researchers from three institutions collaborated on this
work. In addition to Montclare, NYU School of Engineering doctoral candidate
Jasmin Hume, graduate student Rudy Jacquet, and undergraduate student Jennifer
Sun co-authored the paper. Richard Bonneau, an associate
professor in NYU's Department of Biology and a member of the computer science
faculty at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and postdoctoral
scholar P. Douglas
Renfrew also contributed, along with M. Lane Gilchrist, associate professor of
chemical engineering at City College of New York and master’s degree student Jesse A. Martin, also from City College.
Their work was supported by the Army Research Office and the National Science
Foundation.
The full study, “Engineered Coiled-Coil Protein
Microfibers,” is available at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/bm5004948).
The NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering
dates to 1854, when the NYU School of Civil Engineering and Architecture as
well as the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute (widely known as
Brooklyn Poly) were founded. Their successor institutions merged in January
2014 to create a comprehensive school of education and research in engineering
and applied sciences, rooted in a tradition of invention, innovation and
entrepreneurship. In addition to programs at its main campus in downtown
Brooklyn, it is closely connected to engineering programs in NYU Abu Dhabi and
NYU Shanghai, and it operates business incubators in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn.
For more information, visit http://engineering.nyu.edu.
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