A comprehensive analysis of liposomal biomolecular corona upon human plasma incubation: The evolution towards the lipid corona

Giorgia La Barbera, Anna Laura Capriotti*, Giulio Caracciolo, Chiara Cavaliere, Andrea Cerrato, Carmela Maria Montone, Susy Piovesana, Daniela Pozzi, Erica Quagliarini, Aldo Laganà

*Corresponding author for this work
6 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

When drug nanocarriers enter a physiological environment, their surface gets coated by a dynamic biomolecular corona (BMC) mainly constituted by proteins. Although a deep investigation has been performed on the composition of BMC in terms of proteins, scarce attention has been posed to low molecular weight metabolites present in human plasma. In this work, for the first time, the investigation of the BMC of liposomal nanoparticles (NPs) constituted by 1,2-dioleoyl-3-trimethylammonium-propane polar lipid has been carried out by an ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry based untargeted metabolomics approach. Compounds were tentatively identified based on matches with online databases and comparison of MS/MS spectra with available spectral libraries. Moreover, a comparison of three metabolite extraction strategies, including an ultrafiltration membrane based protocol, a methanol extraction based protocol, and Wessel & Flügge protocol, was performed. Methanol extraction procedure resulted in the widest metabolic coverage of liposomal NP BMC. A total of 193 metabolites has been tentatively identified, 166 of which belonged to the class of lipids including phospholipids, steroids, carnitines, fatty alcohols, diglycerides and fatty acids. The high abundance of lipids in the BMC can be explained by the adsorption of plasma lipoproteins onto liposome surface, confirming previous works on other kinds of NPs. Lipids are important bioactive molecules, which could impact NP circulation and uptake by cells. Extending the investigation of BMC beyond the protein corona and towards the “lipid corona” may be the keystone of a better understanding and control of NP fate in human body.

Original languageEnglish
Article number120487
JournalTalanta
ISSN0039-9140
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2020

Keywords

  • Corona
  • High resolution mass spectrometry
  • Lipidomics
  • Lipoproteins
  • Liposome
  • Metabolomics

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