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Novel Pentablock Copolymers for Selective Gene Delivery to Cancer Cells

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Abstract

Purpose

In this study, the novel poly(diethylaminoethylmethacrylate) (PDEAEM)/Pluronic F127 pentablock copolymers were found to be able to mediate high-efficiency transfection of human epithelial ovarian carcinoma (SKOV3) cell line while showing significantly lower efficacy in human epithelial retinal (ARPE-19) cell line and Swiss Mouse Fibroblast (3T3) cell line.

Methods

The intracellular routes of polyplexes were investigated by confocal microscopy after appropriately labeling the polymer and DNA.

Results

It was found that lesser nuclear entry in the ARPE-19 cells may result in the lower efficiency of transfection. Since the SKOV3 proliferation rate was found to be much higher than that of the ARPE-19 cells, the nuclear entry of polyplexes was assumed to be correlated with the proliferation rate, and it was hypothesized that the novel pentablock copolymers could mediate gene delivery selectively in fast growing cells. The different intracellular barriers to gene transfer may also account for the observed difference of transfection efficacy.

Conclusions

Although the validity of the hypothesis that our pentablock copolymer could selectively transfect hyperproliferative cells needs further examination, this present work provides a new perspective to design targeting vectors for cancer therapies based on different characteristics among specific cell types.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to acknowledge financial support from the Bailey Career Development grant and a NSF-REU grant. We would also like to thank Marit Nilsen-Hamilton for providing 3T3 cells. Mallapragada would like to dedicate this manuscript to Prof. Nicholas Peppas for his exceptional guidance, mentoring and friendship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Iowa State University, 3035 Sweeney Hall, Ames, Iowa, 50014, USA

    Bingqi Zhang, Mathumai Kanapathipillai & Surya Mallapragada

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, USA

    Paul Bisso

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  1. Bingqi Zhang
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  2. Mathumai Kanapathipillai
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Correspondence to Surya Mallapragada.

Electronic supplementary material

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11095_2008_9813_MOESM1_ESM.doc

Supplementary Figure 1. Proliferation measurement of SKOV3 cells (A) and ARPE-19 cells (B) with nuclei labeled by DAPI (blue) and newly formed cells labeled by Brdu (pink). (DOC 1.02 MB)

Supplementary Figure 2. Fluorescence spectra of DNA-EMA and degraded DNA-EMA treated with nuclease I. (DOC 32.0 KB)

11095_2008_9813_MOESM3_ESM.doc

Supplementary Figure 3. Transfection of HT1080/ARPE-19 cells with P/DNA (EGFP-N1) polyplexes at N/P ratio of 20. After being labeled with DAPI, HT1080 cells are shown in purple (overlap of red and blue) and ARPE-19 cells are shown in blue (A); EGFP expression in HT1080 cells are indicated in yellow (B). (DOC 1.26 MB)

11095_2008_9813_MOESM4_ESM.doc

Supplementary Figure 4. EGFP expression in HT1080/ARPE-19 co-cultures transfected with ExGen/DNA (EGFP-N1) polyplexes at N/P ratio of 6. (DOC 803 KB)

Supplementary Scheme 1. Amine functionalization of pentablock copolymers. (DOC 40 KB)

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Zhang, B., Kanapathipillai, M., Bisso, P. et al. Novel Pentablock Copolymers for Selective Gene Delivery to Cancer Cells. Pharm Res 26, 700–713 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11095-008-9813-y

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