Labile Catalytic Packaging and Delivering of Short Interference RNA to Cancer Cells: Control of Gold Nanoparticles “Out” of siRNA Complexes

We report a novel approach to efficiently package and deliver siRNAs with low generation dendrimers by using Au nanoparticles as a “labile catalytic” packaging agent. The Au nanoparticles helped low generation dendrimers to package siRNA but are not included in the final siRNA complexes. Therefore, the potential toxic problem accompanied with the Au nanoparticles can be easily solved by selectively separating the gold nanoparticles before the siRNA nanoparticles are delivered. This is a new concept in using inorganic engineered nanoparticles in nucleic acid packaging and delivery applications.