Microfluidic-Based Cationic Cholesterol Lipid siRNA Delivery Nanosystem: Highly Efficient In Vitro Gene Silencing and the Intracellular Behavior

International Journal of Molecular Sciences

卷:23

Ruilong Sheng¹  Li Zhang²  Zhaoyuan Zhu³  Jian Chen³ 

[1] CQM-Centro de Quimica da Madeira, Universidade da Madeira, Campus da Penteada, 9000-390 Funchal, Madeira, Portugal;

[2] Instrumental Analysis Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, No. 800, Dongchuan Road, Shanghai 200240, China;

[3] School of Pharmacy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, No. 800, Dongchuan Road, Shanghai 200240, China;

关键词: microfluidics;    cationic cholesterol lipid;    siRNA delivery;    endocytosis pathway;    gene silencing;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijms23073999

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Safe and efficient delivery of small interfering RNA (siRNA) is essential to gene therapy towards intervention of genetic diseases. Herein, we developed a novel cationic cholesterol lipid derivative (CEL) in which cholesterol hydrophobic skeleton was connected to L-lysine cationic headgroup via a hexanediol linker as the non-viral siRNA delivery carrier. Well-organized CEL/siRNA nanocomplexes (100–200 nm) were prepared by microfluidic-assisted assembly of CEL and siRNA at various N/P ratios. The CEL and CEL/siRNA nanocomplexes have lower cytotoxicity compared with bPEI25k. Delightfully, we disclosed that, in Hela–Luc and H1299–Luc cell lines, the micro-fluidic-based CEL/siRNA nanocomplexes exhibited high siRNA transfection efficiency under both serum-free condition (74–98%) and low-serum circumstances (80–87%), higher than that of lipofectamine 2000. These nanocomplexes also showed high cellular uptake through the caveolae/lipid-raft mediated endocytosis pathway, which may greatly contribute to transfection efficiency. Moreover, the time-dependent (0–12 h) dynamic intracellular imaging demonstrated the efficient delivery to cytoplasm after lysosomal co-localization. The results indicated that the microfluidic-based CEL/siRNA nanosystems possessed good stability, low cytotoxicity, high siRNA delivery efficiency, rapid cellular uptake and caveolae/lipid raft-dependent internalization. Additionally, this study provides a simple approach for preparing and applying a “helper lipid-free” cationic lipid siRNA delivery system as potential nanotherapeutics towards gene silencing treatment of (tumor) diseases.

【 授权许可】

Unknown