Conjugation of oligo-His peptides to magnetic γ-Fe2O3@SiO2 core-shell nanoparticles promotes their access to the cytosol

The endosomal entrapment of functional nanoparticles is a severe limitation to their use for biomedical applications. In the case of magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs), this entrapment leads to poor heating efficiency for magnetic hyperthermia and suppresses the possibility to manipulate them in the cytosol. Current strategies to limit their entrapment are based on their functionalization with cell-penetrating peptides in order to promote their translocation directly across the cell membrane or their endosomal escape. However, these strategies suffer from potential release of free peptides in cell and to the best of our knowledge there is currently a lack of effective methods for the cytosolic delivery of MNPs after incubation with cells. Herein, we report the conjugation of fluorescently labelled cationic peptides to γ-Fe2O3@SiO2 core-shell nanoparticles by click chemistry to improve MNP access to the cytosol. We compare the effect of Arg9 and His4 peptides. On one hand, Arg9 is a classical cell-penetrating peptide, able to enter cells by direct translocation and on the other hand, it has been demonstrated that sequences rich in histidine residues promote endosomal escape, most probably by the proton sponge effect. The methodology developed allows to have a high co-localization of the peptides and core-shell nanoparticles in cells and to attest that the grafting onto nanoparticles of peptides rich in histidine promotes NP access to the cytosol. The endosomal escape was confirmed by a calcein leakage assay and by ultrastructural analysis in transmission electron microscopy. No toxicity of the nanoparticles functionalized with peptides was found. We show that our conjugation strategy is compatible with the addition of multiple substrates and can thus be used for the delivery of cytoplasm-targeted therapeutics.