Phenylboronic acid modified carbon dots for improved protein delivery

It is a great challenge to establish a universal nanocarrier for delivering different proteins, due to the differences of proteins in molecular weights, isoelectric points and spatial structures. Even though some carriers including polymer, liposomes and inorganic nanomaterials have been utilized to deliver proteins, most of them are only suitable for specific proteins. In the present work, amine-riched carbon dots (CDs) were introduced phenyl boronic acid to form CD-B, which could load various proteins with considerable contents. Hemoglobin (Hb) and glucose oxidase (GOX) were used as models to form [email protected] and [email protected] nanohybrids, and their loading content and efficiency were improved significantly. Most importantly, these protein hybrids could be internalized by the living cells, and the protein activities were maintained effectively. This work developed a versatile platform for efficacious loading proteins with compromising activity.