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Polymers and Self Assembly: From Biology to Nanomaterials
Tuesday Speaker Abstracts
Lipid Nanoparticles and Amyloids Activate Receptors of the Innate System
Jean-Marie Ruysschaert,
Malvina Pizzuto, Caroline Lonez
Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, Belgium.
Toll-like receptors are major members of the Pattern Recognition Receptors (PRRs) from the
innate immune system, which recognize bacterial or viral components. It was recently
demonstrated that those receptors, that usually recognized molecular patterns characteristic of
pathogens, are activated by non bacterial lipid and protein aggregates (amyloids) structurally
different from the natural ligands. We will illustrate this aspect with two examples related to
nanoparticles and neurodegenerative diseases. It is tempting to speculate that amyloid fibrils
represent a new class of danger signals detected by the innate immune system, through sensing
of their common cross-β structure, a motif common to all amyloids irrespective of their origin
and sequence.The immune system responds more specifically to structural features of fibrils
rather than to an aggregated state or to a specific sequence motif.
It is hard to believe that nanoparticles which are so different from natural ligands do activate
receptors the same way natural ligands do. How lipid and protein nanoparticles made of a large
number of molecules activate pattern recognition receptors is still unknown but it is very likely
that it proceeds via a new mechanism quite different from what has been described so far for
monomeric natural ligands. Implications in nanotechnologies and nanomedicine will be briefly
discussed.
1-Lonez C, Vandenbranden M, Ruysschaert JM.-Adv Drug Deliv Rev. 2012,64,1749-58
2- Lonez C, Bessodes M, Scherman D, Vandenbranden M, Escriou V, Ruysschaert JM.
Nanomedicine. 2014 -10(4):775-82-