Amino Acid-Functionalized Dendritic Polyglycerol for Safe and Effective siRNA Delivery

Biomacromolecules. 2015 Dec 14;16(12):3869-77. doi: 10.1021/acs.biomac.5b01196. Epub 2015 Dec 1.

Abstract

The development of safe and effective delivery vectors is a great challenge for the medicinal application of RNA interference (RNAi). In this study, we aimed to develop new synthetic transfection agents based on dendritic polyglycercol (dPG), which has shown great biocompatibility in several biomaterial applications. Histidine and aromatic amino acids were conjugated to the amine-terminated dPGs through amide bonds. We systematically tuned the amino acid combination, functionalization ratio, ligand density, and dPG core size to find optimal vectors. It was found that histidine-tryptophan-functionalized dPGs exhibited improved delivery efficiency and greatly reduced toxicity over simple amine-terminated dPGs. Furthermore, the optimized vectors exhibited strong siRNA binding and high transfection efficiency in serum containing media. The results indicate that the current amino acid-functionalized dPG system is a promising candidate for in vivo siRNA delivery applications.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Culture Media / chemistry
  • Dendrimers / chemistry*
  • Gene Expression
  • Gene Silencing
  • Gene Transfer Techniques
  • Genes, Reporter
  • Genetic Vectors / chemistry*
  • Glycerol / chemistry*
  • Green Fluorescent Proteins / antagonists & inhibitors
  • Green Fluorescent Proteins / genetics
  • Green Fluorescent Proteins / metabolism
  • Histidine / chemistry*
  • Mice
  • NIH 3T3 Cells
  • Polymers / chemistry*
  • RNA, Small Interfering / genetics*
  • RNA, Small Interfering / metabolism
  • Tryptophan / chemistry*

Substances

  • Culture Media
  • Dendrimers
  • Polymers
  • RNA, Small Interfering
  • Green Fluorescent Proteins
  • polyglycerol
  • Histidine
  • Tryptophan
  • Glycerol