Abstract
Cucurbit[7]uril (CB[7]), a representative member of the host family cucurbit[n]uril, can host-guest interact with many guest molecules such as adamantane, viologen and naphthalene derivatives. This host-guest interaction provides an easy strategy in gene vector assembling. Furthermore, CB[7] can self-assemble on gold nanospheres (AuNSs). Herein, the combination of CB[7] and AuNSs provides both advantages of host-guest interaction and photo-thermal effect of AuNSs. In this study, polyethyleneimine (PEI) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) were separately interacted with CB[7] via host-guest interaction. Then by assembling on AuNSs, PEI and PEG were combined together to condense DNA into polyplexes as well as enhance circulation stability of the polyplexes. These gene vectors were found to have high cellular uptake efficiency and low cytotoxicity. Furthermore, the well distributed AuNSs in the polyplexes could transform light into heat under light exposure because of the photo-thermal effect. This was found to effectively promote the entry of gene into cytoplasm and highly enhanced gene transfection efficiency.
Highlights
Gene delivery is a promising method for tumor therapy
The resulted gene vectors were expected to be stabilized by both NPEG shell and AuNSs as crosslinking points
-SH were exposed at the presence of tris(2-carboxyethyl) phosphine (TCEP)
Summary
This further confirmed the successful assembly of MPEI@AuNS@NPEG/DNA. The cellular uptake efficiency of MPEI@AuNS@NPEG/DNA polyplexes at pH of 6.5 had no significant difference with that at pH of 7.4, which reached 90%. Gene transfection efficiency of MPEI@AuNS@NPEG/DNA had no significant difference after 5 min light irradiation at 635 nm. As time extended to 10 min, about 2.7 and 2.9 times enhancement appeared for MPEI@AuNS@NPEG/ DNA at N/P ratios of 30 and 50, respectively These might be because the photo-thermal effects of AuNSs transformed light into heat after 10 min irradiation. Encouraged by these results, intracellular fluorescent tracing was proceeded to find the exact mechanism for higher gene transfection efficiency by confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) . The introduction of photo-thermal effect revealed an effective way in the design of gene vector
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