BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Chem. Biol.
Sec. Structure, Spectroscopy & Imaging
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fchbi.2025.1610127
This article is part of the Research TopicPeptide and Protein ModificationsView all articles
Boronic Acid-Modified Cell-Penetrating Peptides Exhibit Superior Performance Over Natural TAT Peptide
Provisionally accepted
- Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany
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This study explores an enhancement to a cell-penetrating peptide (CPP), specifically cyclic deca arginine (cR10), by modifying it with boronic acid to improve the delivery efficiency of ubiquitin (Ub), an essential protein that plays various roles in cellular functions. The hypothesis is that adding boronic acid could boost cellular uptake through glycan-boronic acid interactions. This research assesses how the boronic acid-modified cR10 compares to TAT, a natural CPP derived from the HIV-1 transactivator of transcription, in delivering Ub into cells.Experiments with U2OS cells indicated that the boronic acid-linked cR10Ub cargo achieved a fourfold increase in cellular uptake compared to the TAT-Ub conjugate. The findings from this study could contribute to developing new approaches for enhancing protein delivery methods relevant to biomedical research and therapeutic applications.
Keywords: CPP (cell penetrating peptide), Ubiquitin (Ub), Boronic acid, live cell activity, Microscopy, Flow Cytometry, Therapeatic
Received: 11 Apr 2025; Accepted: 28 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ghosh. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Pritam Ghosh, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany
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