Water-based synthesis of keratin micro- and nanoparticles with tunable mucoadhesive properties for drug delivery

Abstract

Micro- and nanoparticles of proteins are very promising for drug delivery thanks to their biocompatibility, biodegradability and different interesting functionalities that the proteins can provide to the device. In the present work, we present a water-based method to synthesize micro- and nanoparticles from keratin proteins extracted from wool. This new synthesis method allows us to produce uniform particles with spherical morphology and no aggregation. The size of the particles can be controlled in the 200 to 800 nm range. The synthesis can be performed even at low temperatures, making it very interesting for the loading of keratin particles with labile drugs. The drug loading was studied in order to determine the driving factors (charge, hydrophobicity, and molecular weight) affecting the encapsulation efficiency. Both keratin in solution and the synthesized keratin particles showed a positive interaction with mucin. The mucoadhesion can be altered by loading molecules in the keratin particles, providing a mechanism that has the potential to tailor the interaction between particles and mucosae for the desired medical treatment.