The introduction of genes into glial cells for mechanistic studies of cell function and as a therapeutic for gene delivery is an expanding field. Though viral vector based systems do exhibit good delivery efficiency and long-term production of the transgene, the need for transient gene expression, broad and rapid gene setup methodologies, and safety concerns regarding in vivo application still ...

Materials and methods Human breast carcinoma cell lines MCF7 (wild-type p53) and MDA-MB-231 (mutant p53) were exposed to dox and citotoxicity was assessed through the MTT assay. Apoptosis was detected through analysis of flow cytometry DNA content and caspases-3, -7 and -9 levels. Survivin, XIAP, p53 and FoxM1 levels were assessed by Western blotting and Survivin and XIAP mRNA levels, by Real T...

UNLABELLED The objective of this work was to examine the effects of magnet distance (and by proxy, field strength) on nanomagnetic transfection efficiency. METHODS non-viral magnetic nanoparticle-based transfection was evaluated using both static and oscillating magnet arrays. RESULTS Fluorescence intensity (firefly luciferase) of transfected H292 cells showed no increase using a 96-well Nd...

Recent data on the application of dendritic cells (DCs) as anti-tumor vaccines has shown their great potential in therapy and prophylaxis of cancer. Here we report on a comparison of two treatment schemes with DCs that display the models of prophylactic and therapeutic vaccination using three different experimental tumor models: namely, Krebs-2 adenocarcinoma (primary tumor), melanoma (B16, met...

BACKGROUND Gene therapy has tremendous potential for both inherited and acquired diseases. However, delivery problems limited their clinical application, and new gene delivery vehicles with low cytotoxicity and high transfection efficiency are greatly required. METHODS In this report, we designed and synthesized three amphiphilic molecules (L1-L3) with the structures involving 1, 4, 7, 10-tet...

A variety of genetic diseases in the retina, including retinitis pigmentosa and leber congenital amaurosis, might be excellent targets for gene delivery as treatment. A major challenge in non-viral gene delivery remains finding a safe and effective delivery system. Poly(beta-amino ester)s (PBAEs) have shown great potential as gene delivery reagents because they are easily synthesized and they t...

The purpose of the present work was to formulate and evaluate cationic poly(lactic acid)-poly(ethylene glycol) (PLA-PEG) nanoparticles as novel non-viral gene delivery nano-device. Cationic PLA-PEG nanoparticles were prepared by nanoprecipitation method. The gene loaded nanoparticles were obtained by incubating the report gene pEGFP with cationic PLA-PEG nanoparticles. The physicochemical prope...

We developed a novel small interfering RNA (siRNA) delivery system using a ternary complex with polyethyleneimine (PEI) and γ-polyglutamic acid (γ-PGA), which showed silencing effect and no cytotoxicity. The binary complexes of siRNA with PEI were approximately 73-102 nm in particle size and 45-52 mV in ζ-potential. The silencing effect of siRNA/PEI complexes increased with an increase of PEI, ...

Unlike the development of drugs based on small chemical entities there are no conventional regulatory toxicity studies established for DNA-based products. As the potential for insertional mutagenesis is of particular concern for gene therapy, we have investigated the mutagenicity of model non-viral DNA-based products at the HPRT locus in Chinese hamster V79 cells. Cultures were transfected with...