Nanoparticles in the lung and their protein corona: the few proteins that count.

AbstractThe formation of protein coronae on nanoparticles (NPs) has been investigated almost exclusively in serum, despite the prevailing route of exposure being inhalation of airborne particles. In addition, an increasing number of nanomedicines, that exploit the airways as the site of delivery, are undergoing medical trials. An understanding of the effects of NPs on the airways is therefore required. To further this field, we have described the corona formed on polystyrene (PS) particles with different surface modifications and on titanium dioxide particles when incubated in human bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) from patients with pulmonary alveolar proteinosis (PAP). We show, using high-resolution quantitative mass spectrometry (MSE), that a large number of proteins bind with low copy numbers but that a few “core” proteins bind to all particles tested with high fidelity, averaging the surface properties of the different particles independent of the surface properties of the specific particle. The a...