Cyclic RGD peptide incorporation on phage major coat proteins for improved internalization by HeLa cells

Delivering therapeutic materials or imaging reagents into specific tumor tissues is critically important for development of novel cancer therapeutics and diagnostics. Genetically engineered phages possess promising structural features to develop cancer therapeutic materials. For cancer targeting purposes, we developed a novel engineered phage that expressed cyclic RGD (cRGD) peptides on the pVIII major coat protein using recombinant DNA technology. Using a type 88 phage engineering approach, which inserts a new gene to express additional major coat protein in the noncoding region of the phage genome, we incorporated an additional pVIII major coat protein with relatively bulky cRGD and assembled heterogeneous major coat proteins on the F88.4 phage surfaces. With IPTG control, we could tune different numbers of cRGD peptide displayed on the phage particles up to 140 copies. The resulting phage with cRGD on the recombinant pVIII protein exhibited enhanced internalization efficiency into HeLa cells in a ligand density and conformational structure dependent manner when comparing with the M13 phages modified with either linear RGD on pVIII or cRGD on pIII. Our cRGD peptide engineered phage could be useful for cancer therapy or diagnostic purposes after further modifying the phage with drug molecules or contrast reagents in the future.