With the rise and development of gene therapy, it is of great significance to develop highly efficient and biocompatible polymeric gene carriers. In this work, a series of heteropolymers from ring-opening polymerization of diepoxide compounds and various functional primary amines were synthesized. The feed dosage of amines was adjusted to obtain the polymers with different functional group contents, and the structure-activity relationships of these polymers as nonviral gene vectors were examined in detail. Results revealed that, although the amine with the fluorinated chain seemed to be less reactive in the polymerization, the relative content of each component in the target product was consistent with the feed dosage. Compared to the "golden standard" polyethylenimine (PEI) 25 kDa, these heteropolymers showed much lower cytotoxicity and higher gene transfection efficiency, especially in serum-containing medium, and up to 78 times of efficiency than PEI was obtained. Meanwhile, they exhibited much better serum resistance than PEI, compared with the transfection efficiency in serum-free experiments, and even higher efficiency could be achieved with serum in HeLa cells. Mechanism study results suggest that the content of fluorinated chain and histamine might distinctly influence their transfection. The fluorinated chains could enhance the serum tolerance and cellular uptake efficiency (with serum), while the imidazole group in the histamine chain would improve the endosome/lysosome escape.
Keywords: cationic polymer; fluorinated polymer; gene delivery; histamine; non-viral gene vectors.