Hydrophobin HGFI improving the nanoparticle formation, stability and solubility of Curcumin

Abstract The clinical utilities of many drugs were limited by poor solubility significantly for a long time until the distinguished development of nano drug carrier for enhancing their bioavailability. However, most of nano drug carriers were involved in extremely complex synthesis procedures, unstable quality control, and also the indeterminate pharmacokinetics in drug release phase. In this study, we designed and synthesized a novel nano drug carrier aiming to ameliorate the solubility of curcumin. Hydrophobins, as amphiphilic proteins from filamentous fungi, attracted numerous attentions in biomaterials since their distinguished natural surfactant activities. Herein, as a novel nano drug carrier, hydrophobins were formed into nanoparticles containing curcumin in spontaneous manner by the strong surfactant activity of hydrophobins. In biomedical assays, the nanoparticles showed remarkable cell uptake efficiency, cell proliferation inhibitory and antitumor activity in intro and in vivo. In brief, it was ascertained that hydrophobins are capable to be employed as an efficient drug carrier for improving the poor solubility, low bioavailability of drugs such as curcumin. It was convinced that the easy-operation and safety properties of hydrophobins might prompt the applications of hydrophobins in pharmaceutics for many other drugs in future.