Synthetic transmembrane peptide conjugates as biomimetic carriers for specific treatment and diagnostics of pancreatic cancer

Membrane proteins play an essential role for the controlled transport of compounds through the cell membrane.

Studying their structure and transport functions is essential to develop novel delivery mechanisms of drugs or biomarkers into the cell.

Transmembrane peptide domains (MP) of these proteins have a specific composition according their environment in the host cell. These domains are important in maintaining the function of the protein by connection to a cell membrane.

The major reason, why structure and functional studies of MPs are still underrepresented is that there is a significant lack in production, modifications and conjugation techniques available today.

With respect to the production of small and medium sized MP, their chemical synthesis can clearly be considered as the single most effective route as MPs can be easily modified through incorporation of labels, conjugation sites, or artificial amino acids.

Within this proposal we aim to provide access to synthetic MPs-conjugates, by developing conjugation technique applying ionic liquids. We will study incorporation of MPs-conjugates into a lipid environment like a host cell. We will use MPs sequences of transmembrane regions known from pathogenic pancreatic cancer cells.

We will explore the fusion behavior of MPs-conjugates from an intermediate stage MPs-conjugated-lipid system into pancreatic cancer cells in order to develop a new drug delivery technology with a broad application in treatment and diagnostics.