Lens Crystallins: Use in Tissue Engineering Applications and Drug Delivery Strategies

Abstract

The current study describes about the use of lens protein crystallins in tissue engineering applications as well as its role in drug delivery strategies. To show their tissue engineering applications, these structural proteins were tried to be fabricated into nanofibers by the process of electrospinning. For the preparation of electrospin fibers, first the crude mixtures of the lens protein solution were lyophilized and made into powder and these were then compared to each other on the basis of their structural changes and activity by doing characterizations like SDS-PAGE, FTIR spectroscopic study, circular dichroism, chaperone activity study. The results showed no such significant differences between the lens proteins before and after lyophilization. Further, these lyophilized powder were mixed with different solvents and finally it was found that with 40% protein/TFA solution the proteins are getting electropun nicely and proper nanofibers were prepared. The morphology of the prepared fibers were then studied using Scanning electron microscope (SEM) and the diameters of these were found to be in nanometer range. These fibers were then compared with the lyophilized lens powder using FTIR spectroscopic study, XRD, solubility study and the changes between the two were analyzed. The FTIR spectroscopic study and the XRD study of the nanofibers showed the characteristics of an amyloid fibril formation. Further to analyze the biocompatible nature of the electrospun fibers cytocompatibility and cell proliferation studies were done. The fibers were found to be biocompatible in nature. To show the role of these protein in drug delivery strategies a dual environment responsive hydrogels were prepared as a model system. These were successfully synthesized and characterized. Drug delivery kinetics study using insulin was done to see if these hydrogels can deliver drug in a sustained way or not and thus can be used successfully as a model system with crystallins.