A Modular Method for Rapidly Prototyping Targeted Gas Vesicle Protein Nanoparticles
Creators
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1.
University of British Columbia
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2.
California Institute of Technology
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3.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Abstract
Gas vesicles (GVs) are air-filled protein nanoparticles that are proving to be useful in a number of biomedical applications. We hypothesized that it could be possible to develop a modular method for creating rapidly prototyped GVs by modifying their surface chemistry to include targeting peptides in an orientation-specific manner. Here, we describe a modular method to create targeted GVs using His-tagged antibody fragments, ensuring that the antibody fragments are connected to the GV in an orientation-specific manner. This is achieved via the functionalization of the GVs with the nickel-nitrilotriacetic acid (Ni-NTA) group. First, we validated that these functionalized GVs can bind His-tagged green fluorescent protein and characterized the particle size and surface charge of functionalized GVs. Then, GVs targeted to prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) using a minibody were validated using a knockout validation in vitro.
Copyright and License
© 2026 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank the following collaborators for helpful discussions throughout this work: Rohit Singla, Nivin Nystrom, Di Wu, Yuxing Yao, Shirin Shivaei, Rohit Nayak, Mitali Pandey, Hao Shen, Nathan Lack, Flora Huang, Meric Dikbas, and Atsuhiko Yoshizawa. Funding for this work was provided by the Friedman Award for Scholars in Health from the University of British Columbia for R.V., a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Canada Graduate Scholarship and Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement for R.V., the Lazlo Chair in Biomedical Engineering for S.E.S. and the National Institutes of Health (RO1-EB018975) for M.G.S.
Supplemental Material
Calibration curve to estimate GFP concentration from fluorescence signal (PDF)
Files
bc5c00387_si_001.pdf
Additional details
Identifiers
- PMID
- 41553979
Funding
- University of British Columbia
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council
- National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering
- RO1-EB018975
Dates
- Submitted
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2025-08-06
- Accepted
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2025-12-03
- Available
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2026-01-19Published online
Caltech Custom Metadata
- Caltech groups
- Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering (CCE) , Division of Biology and Biological Engineering (BBE) , Division of Engineering and Applied Science (EAS)
- Publication Status
- Published