Efficient Transfection of siRNA by Peptide Dendrimer-Lipid Conjugates.

Efficient Transfection of siRNA by Peptide Dendrimer-Lipid Conjugates. Chembiochem. 2016 Nov 9;: Authors: Kwok A, Eggimann GA, Heitz M, Reymond JL, Hollfelder F, Darbre T Abstract Efficient delivery of small interfering RNA (siRNA) into cells is the basis of target-gene-specific silencing and, ultimately, gene therapy. However, current transfection reagents are relatively inefficient, and very few studies provide the sort of systematic understanding based on structure-activity relationships that would provide rationales for their improvement. This work established peptide dendrimers (administered with cationic lipids) as siRNA transfection reagents and recorded structure-activity relationships that highlighted the importance of positive charge distribution in the two outer layers and a hydrophobic core as key features for efficient performance. These dendrimer-based transfection reagents work as well as highly optimised commercial reagents, yet show less toxicity and fewer off-target effects. Additionally, the degrees of freedom in the synthetic procedure will allow the placing of decisive recognition features to enhance and fine-tune transfection and cell specificity in the future. PMID: 27862758 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Chembiochem - Category: Biochemistry Authors: Tags: Chembiochem Source Type: research