Synthesis and enhanced thermal stability of albumins@alumina: towards injectable sol-gel materials

A major obstacle to the introduction of bioactively-doped sol-gel based materials for medical applications has been the fact that silica - the most widely studied sol-gel material - despite being a GRAS material, which is widely used as an additive in foods and drug formulations, is still not approved by regulatory agencies for intramuscular injections. Here we point to a potential solution to this problem by shifting the weight to alumina, which is approved for injections as the most common immunization adjuvant. Towards the achievement of this goal we describe the development of protein entrapment methods tailored to alumina, and show high thermal stability of protein-dopants, using a newly developed DSC methodology for this purpose.