Abstract 3215: Detecting low abundance therapeutic targets for ovarian cancer using engineered gold nanoparticles

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have been widely studied for use in disease therapeutics as targeting and imaging agents, drug delivery vehicles and as self-therapeutics. When AuNPs interact with the biological milieu they form a corona layer, which is predominantly composed of proteins. The outer “soft” layer is dynamic and here proteins are free to exchange over time. The inner “hard” layer on the other hand consists of proteins firmly bound to the NP surface. The Vromans effect predicts that given a limited surface area, low affinity, high abundance proteins, that first attach to the surface, are over time replaced by high affinity, low abundance proteins. Our aim was to enrich low abundance proteins on the AuNP surface to probe for differentially expressed proteins that are not detected by traditional methods of protein identification. We studied the binding of ovarian cell lysates (cancerous and non cancerous) to 10 nm sized positively and negatively charged AuNPs. The formation of corona around the AuNPs was characterized by dynamic light scattering and zeta potential measurements. The composition of the protein corona was identified using mass spectrometry. Proteins were also identified from the cell lysate pool to serve as a control to assess protein enrichment on NP surface. Using this approach, Hepatoma Derived Growth Factor (HDGF) was identified as a low abundance protein that was detected by mass spectrometry in cancer cells only after enrichment on the surface of positively charged AuNPs. HDGF is overexpressed in multiple ovarian cancer cells lines and knock down using siRNA shows decrease in cell proliferation, G2/M arrest and apoptosis. This suggests an important role of HDGF in the tumorigenicity of ovarian cancer, which could serve as an important therapeutic target for the disease. Citation Format: Karuna Giri, Rochelle Arvizo. Detecting low abundance therapeutic targets for ovarian cancer using engineered gold nanoparticles. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2013 Apr 6-10; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2013;73(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 3215. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2013-3215