[Nanogel engineering and chaperone engineering].

Abstract

Chaperone-like activity (to trap proteins in biomaterials without their aggregations and to control release of proteins in a native form) is important to design protein delivery systems as well as protein engineering. In general, irreversible adsorption of proteins is unavoidable in trapping them in hydrogel biomaterials because it is difficult to control the mesh size of the hydrogel matrix. We suggested that physically cross-linked nanogels with a size comparable to that of proteins are useful for these purposes. Tailor-made functional nanogels and hydrogels were designed by self-assembly of functional associating polysaccharides such as cholesterol-bearing pullulans. The nanogels can trap hydrophobic molecules, proteins and nucleic acids. They are useful as artificial molecular chaperones and also polymeric nanocarriers in DDS.