Sonal Deshpande

Journal Article Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · August 2025 The antifouling performance of a previously developed triblock protein, B-M-E is optimized, that self-assembles on gold surfaces to form a nonfouling layer by modifying the sequence of its E block. In this protein, B is a gold-binding domain, M is a trimer ... Full text Cite

Spatiotemporal Control of IL-12 Delivery Improves Its Efficacy in Treatment of Solid Tumors

Journal Article Advanced Therapeutics · August 1, 2025 Despite renewed interest in IL-12 as a cancer immunotherapy due to its ability to stimulate the adaptive immune system, its short half-life and narrow therapeutic window continues to present challenges for effective delivery. Previous studies with IL-12 ha ... Full text Cite

Synthetic biomolecular condensates enhance translation from a target mRNA in living cells.

Journal Article Nat Chem · March 2025 Biomolecular condensates composed of proteins and RNA are one approach by which cells regulate post-transcriptional gene expression. Their formation typically involves the phase separation of intrinsically disordered proteins with a target mRNA, sequesteri ... Full text Link to item Cite

Binding Strength, Not Valency, Dictates Accumulation and Penetration of Affinity Targeted Macromolecules into Solid Tumors.

Journal Article Biomacromolecules · January 2025 The efficacy of tumor-targeted therapeutics, engineered to engage specific cellular receptors to promote accumulation and penetration, is strongly influenced by the carrier's affinity for its target and the valency of binding molecules incorporated into th ... Full text Cite

Synthetic intrinsically disordered protein fusion tags that enhance protein solubility.

Journal Article Nature communications · May 2024 We report the de novo design of small (<20 kDa) and highly soluble synthetic intrinsically disordered proteins (SynIDPs) that confer solubility to a fusion partner with minimal effect on the activity of the fused protein. To identify highly soluble SynIDPs ... Full text Cite

Enzymatic Synthesis of Aptamer-Polynucleotide Nanoparticles with High Anticancer Drug Loading for Targeted Delivery.

Journal Article Biomacromolecules · January 2024 We report a targeted prodrug delivery platform that can deliver a cytostatic nucleobase analog with high drug loading. We chose fluorouracil (5FU), a drug used to treat various cancers, whose active metabolite 5-fluorodeoxyuridine monophosphate (5-FdUMP) i ... Full text Cite

Genetically Engineered Nanoparticles of Asymmetric Triblock Polypeptide with a Platinum(IV) Cargo Outperforms a Platinum(II) Analog and Free Drug in a Murine Cancer Model.

Journal Article Nano Lett · July 27, 2022 The development of platinum(Pt)-drugs for cancer therapy has stalled, as no new Pt-drugs have been approved in over a decade. Packaging small molecule drugs into nanoparticles is a way to enhance their therapeutic efficacy. To date, there has been no direc ... Full text Link to item Cite

Programmable Site-Specific Functionalization of DNA Origami with Polynucleotide Brushes.

Journal Article Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · October 2021 Combining surface-initiated, TdT (terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase) catalyzed enzymatic polymerization (SI-TcEP) with precisely engineered DNA origami nanostructures (DONs) presents an innovative pathway for the generation of stable, polynucleotide br ... Full text Cite

Enzymatic synthesis and modification of high molecular weight DNA using terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase.

Chapter · January 2019 The recognition that nucleic acids can be used as polymeric materials led to the blossoming of the field of DNA nanotechnology, with a broad range of applications in biotechnology, biosensors, diagnostics, and drug delivery. These applications require effi ... Full text Cite

Enhancing Gene-Knockdown Efficiency of Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) Nanogels

Journal Article ACS Omega · July 31, 2018 Polo-like-kinase 1 (PLK1), which is a serine-threonine protein kinase overexpressed in cancer cells, is known to regulate tumor growth and have recently gathered attention as a target gene for RNA interference because of the poor bioavailability and nonspe ... Full text Cite

Probing the nanoparticle-AGO2 interaction for enhanced gene knockdown.

Journal Article Soft matter · May 2018 RNAi is emerging as a promising technology for treatment of various diseases due to its ability to silence specific target genes. To date, a number of nanoparticle based formulations have been reported for the delivery of small interfering RNA (siRNA), wit ... Full text Cite

Core-shell nanoparticles as an efficient, sustained, and triggered drug-delivery system

Journal Article ACS Omega · October 31, 2017 One of the challenges in designing a successful drug-delivery vehicle is the control over drug release. Toward this, a number of multifunctional nanoparticles with multiple triggers and complex chemistries have been developed. To achieve an efficient and m ... Full text Cite

Influence of Cubosome Surface Architecture on Its Cellular Uptake Mechanism.

Journal Article Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids · April 2017 Interaction of nanoparticles with biological systems is a key factor influencing their efficacy as a drug delivery vehicle. The inconsistency in defining the optimal design parameters across different nanoparticle types suggests that information gained fro ... Full text Cite

Mitigating the cytotoxicity of graphene quantum dots and enhancing their applications in bioimaging and drug delivery

Journal Article ACS Macro Letters · October 21, 2014 Despite the promising photophysical properties of fluorescent graphene quantum dots (GQDs), their cellular toxicity needs to be addressed before their full potential could be completely realized in biomedicine. A simple method for mitigating the toxicity o ... Full text Cite

Enhancing cubosome functionality by coating with a single layer of poly-ε-lysine.

Journal Article ACS applied materials & interfaces · October 2014 We report the preparation and characterization of monoolein cubosomes that can be easily surface modified through adsorption of a single layer of cationic poly-ε-lysine. Poly-ε-lysine coated cubosomes show remarkable stability in serum solution, are nontox ... Full text Cite