Physicochemical and biological characterization of nanovenoms, a new tool formed by silica nanoparticles and Crotalus durissus terrificus venom

Abstract

Nanoparticles (NPs) are being studied due to their potential use as therapeutic and immunomodulatory tools, including their ability to transport antigens with the aim to induce a specific immune response. The production of snake antivenoms (AV) involves several inoculations of venom (V) in the presence of adjuvants (ADJ) to improve the immune response of inoculated animals, causing a decrease in its quality and shelf life. Therefore, it is interesting to develop new strategies for reduce these side effects. For that reason, associating V to NPs to replace conventional ADJ could be a useful tool for future AV production. In this work, nanovenoms (NVs) were generated by the adsorption of Crotalus durissus terrificus (Cdt) V proteins over silica NPs (SiNPs) synthesized according to the Stöber method. Microphotographies obtained under Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) displayed a protein crown over NPs and Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR) presented the expected spectra for NVs resulting from the sum of those exhibited by Cdt V and SiNPs separately. SDS PAGE and immunoblotting assays confirmed the presence of proteins over SiNPs. Furthermore, the different enzymatic activities detected demonstrated that SiNPs were capable of binding V proteins preserving its activity and therefore would keep its native structure. In the same way, the NVs conserve the potential cytotoxic effects present in the V as we observed when culturing THP-1 cells with these complexes. This evidence allows us to infer that developed NVs could be used as a new platform for the production of antisera or for immunomodulatory therapies.