Invited Talk: Repurposing Nature: Engineering Protein Nanocage for Medicine and Beyond

Nature provides us with abundance of biological materials and we have been repurposing them to suit our needs. In this talk, I will highlight protein nanocages and our attempts to engineer, reformat, and repurpose them for medicine, molecular electronic, and consumer care applications.

Protein nanocages can be engineered to tailor their functions. They are formed by the self-assembly of multiple subunits forming hollow cage-like structures of nanometer size. Due to their proteinaceous nature, the protein nanocages allow facile modifications on its internal and external surfaces, as well as the subunit interfaces designed for the intended applications. Protein nanocages loaded with metal have properties that are promising as MRI contrast agents. Loading them with drugs and modifying the interface of the subunits to render the nanocages sensitive to environmental changes, such as pH, shows their potential application as drug carriers.Engineering of the external surface allows for the display of targeting ligands for selective accumulation on cancer cells. Leveraging on its natural or engineered metal-chelating activities, protein nanocages serve a dual function as a reaction container and as a facilitator in the deposition of monodispersed platinum nanoparticles on graphene surfaces for electrocatalysis in fuel cells. Long-range electron tunneling across metal-loaded protein nanocages has also been shown to be promising in the development of memristive devices and future molecular electronics. In the most recent works, we show that the protein nanocages are surface active with an ability to stabilize Pickering emulsion with pH-responsive behavior.