4.8 Article

Cellular Uptake of Substrate-Initiated Cell-Penetrating Poly(disulfide)s

Journal

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 136, Issue 16, Pages 6069-6074

Publisher

AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/ja501581b

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Funding

  1. University of Geneva
  2. European Research Council (ERC Advanced Investigator)
  3. National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Chemical Biology
  4. Swiss National Science Foundation

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Substrate-initiated, self-inactivating, cell-penetrating poly(disulfide)s (siCPDs) are introduced as general transporters for the covalent delivery of unmodified substrates of free choice. With ring-opening disulfide-exchange polymerization, we show that guanidinium-rich siCPDs grow on fluorescent substrates within minutes under the mildest conditions. The most active siCPD transporters reach the cytosol of HeLa cells within 5 min and depolymerize in less than 1 m to release the native substrate. Depolymerized right after use, the best siCPDs are nontoxic under conditions where cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) are cytotoxic. Intracellular localization (cytosol, nucleoli, endosomes) is independent of the substrate and can be varied on demand, through choice of polymer composition. Insensitivity to endocytosis inhibitors and classical structural variations (hydrophobicity, aromaticity, branching, boronic acids) suggest that the best siCPDs act differently. Supported by experimental evidence, a unique combination of the counterion-mediated translocation of CPPs with the underexplored, thiol-mediated covalent translocation is considered to account for this decisive difference.

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