An alternative anticancer therapy based on the use of bovine serum amine oxidase (BSAO), an enzyme that converts polyamines over-expressed in malignant cells, into hydrogen peroxide and aldehyde(s), thus inducing high cytotoxicity in cancer cells, was recently proposed. With the aim of improving the system efficacy by exploiting a nanotechnology approach, BSAO is covalently immobilized onto injectable nanohydrogels (NHs) based on cholesterol-graft-hyaluronic acid (HA-CH), a biocompatible conjugate that spontaneously leads to self-assembled structures in aqueous solutions. In this study, the physicochemical properties of the HA-CH-based NHs and the NHs cytocompatibility are reported. The properties of the NHs-BSAO system are also studied in terms of protein residual activity, both in vitro and on a model melanoma cell line.
Keywords: bovine serum amine oxidase immobilization; hyaluronic acid; melanoma cancer cells; nanohydrogels; polyamines.
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