Integration of Palladium Nanoparticles with Surface Engineered Metal–Organic Frameworks for Cell-Selective Bioorthogonal Catalysis and Protein Activity Regulation

Bioorthogonal catalysis provides a powerful tool to perform non-natural chemical reactions in living systems to dissect complex intracellular processes. Its potency to precisely regulate cellular function, however, is limited by the lack of bioorthogonal catalysts with cell selectivity. Herein, we report that palladium nanoparticles deposited on metal-organic frameworks, Pd@UiO-66, are highly efficient for intracellular bioorthogonal catalysis. In addition, introducing a cancer cell-targeting aptamer, AS1411, onto Pd@UiO-66 enables a threefold enhancement of catalysis efficiency in cancer cells. Moreover, AS1411@Pd@UiO-66 is effective in activating chemically caged 4-hydroxytamoxifen to regulate the activity of a protein destabilizing domain, ER50, and therefore protein function selectively in cancer cells. We show that the control over the activity of a bacterial effector, OspF, using AS1411@Pd@UiO-66 inactivates mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling of cancer cells to selectively prohibit tumor cell growth. We believe that the strategy developed herein for cell-selective bioorthogonal catalysis can expand the chemical biology toolbox for spatiotemporal control of protein function for advanced therapeutic applications.