Effect of Different Karyophilic Peptides on Physical Characteristics and In Vitro Transfection Efficiency of Chitosan-Plasmid Nanoparticles As Nonviral Gene Delivery Systems

Overview

Journal Mol Biotechnol

Publisher Springer

Specialties Biotechnology
Molecular Biology

Date 2024 Feb 24

PMID 38400988

Authors

Maria Eugenia Aranda-Barradas

Hector Eduardo Coronado-Contreras

Yareli Lizbeth Aguilar-Castaneda

Karen Donaji Olivo-Escalante

Francisco Rodolfo Gonzalez-Diaz

Carlos Gerardo Garcia-Tovar

Samuel Alvarez-Almazan

Susana Patricia Miranda-Castro

Alicia Del Real-Lopez

Abraham Mendez-Albores

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

A strategy to increase the transfection efficiency of chitosan-based nanoparticles for gene therapy is by adding nuclear localization signals through karyophilic peptides. Here, the effect of the length and sequence of these peptides and their interaction with different plasmids on the physical characteristics and biological functionality of nanoparticles is reported. The karyophilic peptides (P1 or P2) were used to assemble nanoparticles by complex coacervation with pEGFP-N1, pQBI25 or pSelect-Zeo-HSV1-tk plasmids, and chitosan. Size, polydispersity index, zeta potential, and morphology, as well as in vitro nucleus internalization and transfection capability of nanoparticles were determined. The P2 nanoparticles resulted smaller compared to the ones without peptides or P1 for the three plasmids. In general, the addition of either P1 or P2 did not have a significant impact on the polydispersity index and the zeta potential. P1 and P2 nanoparticles were localized in the nucleus after 30 min of exposure to HeLa cells. Nevertheless, the presence of P2 in pEGFP-N1 and pQBI25 nanoparticles raised their capability to transfect and express the green fluorescent protein. Thus, karyophilic peptides are an efficient tool for the optimization of nonviral vectors for gene delivery; however, the sequence and length of peptides have an impact on characteristics and functionality of nanoparticles.

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