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Les peptides pénétrateurs de cellule (CPP) sont des oligopeptides cationiques faisant parti des vecteurs les plus étudiés dans le cadre du développement du transport ciblé de médicament à l’intérieur de l’organisme. Les applications principales sont par exemple le traitement des cancers ou la thérapie génique. Néanmoins, certaines caractéristiques des CPPs rendent leur utilisation médicale compliquée, tels que leur manque de spécificité à l’égard des cellules cibles ou la perte de leurs propriétés pénétrantes lorsqu’un cargo moléculaire leur est greffé. L’une des solutions envisagées pour résoudre ces problèmes est le greffage sur des polypeptides di-blocs auto-assemblés basés sur de l’élastine (ELPBC), des systèmes développés par l’équipe d’Ashutosh Chilkoti à l’Université de Duke (USA). Des travaux précédents ont montré que ces macromolécules, que l’on appelle CPP-ELPBC, retrouvaient les propriétés pénétrantes du CPP même en présence d’un cargo et permettaient également d’induire une spécificité à l’encontre des cellules cancéreuses. En revanche, le mécanisme de pénétration de ces systèmes restait inconnu.Dans cette thèse, je me suis concentré sur l’étude du mécanisme de pénétration des CPP et des CPP-ELPBC au travers de membranes lipidiques modèles, et en particulier sur l’adsorption de ces molécules à la surface de vésicules unilamellaires géantes (GUV). Le développement d’une nouvelle méthode de quantification de la fluorescence en microscopie confocale m’a permis de réaliser des mesures simples de comptage de peptides à la surface des vésicules, ce qui m’a permis par la suite de procéder à des mesures thermodynamiques de l’adsorption des peptides. / Cell-penetrating peptides (CPP) are cationic oligopeptides currently investigated as potential vectors for targeted drug delivery design, for applications in cancer treatment and/or gene therapy. Nevertheless, some drawbacks make the CPP complex for medical applications, such as their lack of specificity toward target cells or the loss of their penetrating properties once they have been grafted with a molecular cargo. One of the solutions studied to overcome these issues is the binding of the CPP unit on a self-assembling elastin-like diblock polypeptide (ELPBC), a macromolecular system designed by the team of Ashutosh Chilkoti from Duke University (USA). While it has already been proven that these molecules, named CPP-ELPBC, recover the penetrating properties of the CPP despite the presence of a cargo and also induce a selectivity toward tumorous cells, the exact mechanism of translocation is still under debate.In this PhD thesis, I focused on the investigation of the translocation mechanism of the CPP and CPP-ELPBC using model lipid membranes, and specifically the adsorption of these molecules at the surface of giant unilamellar vesicles (GUV). The development of a new quantification method of fluorescence in confocal microscopy allowed me to directly count the peptides adsorbed on the surface of the GUVs, which I used to perform thermodynamic measurements on the peptide adsorption.

<p> </p> <p>Learning about ‘behavior’ has always been at the heart of my research endeavors. While my undergraduate work in evolution and ecology exposed me to the science behind why a behavior exists, in my graduate work, I intended to explore how to use something’s behavior to widen its applicability. In this thesis, <em>I will present three works that utilize some of the fundamental</em></p> <p><em>behaviors (i.e., properties) of elastin-like polypeptides (ELP) to improve existing protein purification methods or explore their applicability in bladder cancer imaging and immunotherapy. </em></p> <p>Bladder cancer has high recurrence rates (60-70 % annually) that necessitate multiple follow-up therapies making it one of the costliest cancers per patient. In this work, we have attempted to address two leading causes of the recurrence. First is a low sensitivity (62-84 %) and variable specificity (43-95 %) of white light cystoscopy used to diagnose and remove tumors. We aimed to address the heart of this problem, i.e., the non-specific mode of detection using white light. Only the trained eyes can discern abnormal from normal-appearing tissues even then, leaving up to 45% of tumors unresected to colonize and spread. <em>We developed and characterized near infrared dye-peptide-ligand conjugates (NIR-ELP-ligand) that undergo receptor-mediated binding and internalization to human bladder cancer cells in vitro and tissues ex vivo.</em> By using a molecular target-based probe in combination with NIR imaging, we can aid in improving the detection limit via selective binding to the tumor and reduction in background autofluorescence.</p> <p>Bacillus-Calmette Guérin (BCG) instillation in the bladder is the gold-standard</p> <p>immunotherapy used after surgical removal of bladder tumors. This was approved as a response to the inefficiency of surgery alone in improving cancer status. It has succeeded by reducing the recurrence rate to 30-50 %. But it comes with the complications of putting a live mycobacterium</p> <p>in the human body and giving a patient a urinary tract infection right after surgical tumor resection. <em>Thus, we aimed to deliver nucleic acid as immunotherapeutic cargo in a selective manner to elicit robust anti-tumor immune responses while minimizing the side effects due to its carrier.</em> Towards</p> <p>this goal, we have developed a highly modular and adaptable ELP-ligand fusion protein-based nucleic acid delivery carrier targeted toward bladder cancer. Before developing targeted peptide-based cancer imaging and nucleic acid delivery modalities, we addressed the Achilles heel of peptide-based approaches. The peptide and protein industry suffers</p> <p>through complex, time-consuming, inconsistent, and low-yielding purification methods. <em>We have developed a scalable, facile, and reproducible protein purification method that delivers ELP and ELP fusion proteins free of host cell proteins and nucleic acids and has low lipopolysaccharide</em></p> <p><em>content in just 3 h starting from a bacterial pellet. </em>Thus, for a coherent narrative, the thesis is structured as follows:</p> <p>1. Introduction</p> <p>2. ELP as a protein purification tag: Development of a rapid purification method for ELPs and ELP fusion proteins.</p> <p>3. ELP as a cancer imaging agent: Development of NIR-ELP-Ligand imaging probe targeting bladder cancer.</p> <p>4. ELP as a drug delivery agent: Utilizing ELP-ligand fusion protein in the formulation of targeted nucleic acid delivery carrier to bladder cancer.</p>