Mechanism study of thermally induced anti-tumor drug loading to engineered human heavy-chain ferritin nanocages aided by computational analysis

Diverse drug loading approaches for human heavy-chain ferritin (HFn), a promising drug nanocarrier, have been established. However, anti-tumor drug loading ratio and protein carrier recovery yield are bottlenecks for future clinical application. Mechanisms behind drug loading have not been elaborated. In this work, a thermally induced drug loading approach was introduced to load anti-tumor drug doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX) into HFn, and 2 functionalized HFns, HFn-PAS-RGDK, and HFn-PAS. Optimal conditions were obtained through orthogonal tests. All 3 HFn-based proteins achieved high protein recovery yield and drug loading ratio. Size exclusion chromatography (SEC) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) results showed the majority of DOX loaded protein (protein/DOX) remained its nanocage conformation. Computational analysis, molecular docking followed by molecular dynamic (MD) simulation, revealed mechanisms of DOX loading and formation of by-product by investigating non-covalent interactions between DOX with HFn subunit and possible binding modes of DOX and HFn after drug loading. In in vitro tests, DOX in protein/DOX entered tumor cell nucleus and inhibited tumor cell growth.