Sequestering ATP inside Mitochondria by Nucleopeptide inducing Cancer Cell death

Abstract

Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) has important roles in cellular processes such as energy production, cellular respiration, cell signaling and metabolism. Most of cancer cells have three times higher concentration of ATP compared to normal cells. By removing ATP inside cancer cells, it can result in severe effect such as apoptosis. Herein, we developed selective cancer treatment by sequestration and self-assemblies of ATP with nucleopeptide (NP). NP has nucleobase (thymine, thy) which interacts with adenine and alternative positively charged amino acids and hydrophobic amino acids which are mitochondria targeting sequence and it can self-assemble in water. NP exhibits higher binding affinity with ATP by electrostatic interaction and hydrogen bond resulting in large complex and assemblies with ATP compared to ADP. To enhance selectivity towards cancer cells, NP-ADP having nanometer-sized micelles accumulates inside cancer cells and form large assembly with ATP which has higher binding affinity by reversible interaction. Thus, sequestration of ATP and large assemblies of NP-ATP inside mitochondria cause severe effects such as the metabolic process of ATP and stress by structures towards cancer cells.