title: A general strategy to prepare different types of polysaccharide-graft-poly(aspartic acid) as degradable gene carriers.
abstract: Owing to their unique properties such as low cytotoxicity and excellent biocompatibility, poly(aspartic acid) (PAsp) and polysaccharides are good candidates for the development of new biomaterials. In order to construct better gene delivery systems by combining polysaccharides with PAsp, in this work, a general strategy is described for preparing series of polysaccharide-graft-PAsp (including cyclodextrin (CD), dextran (Dex) and chitosan (CS)) gene vectors. Such different polysaccharide-based vectors are compared systematically through a series of experiments including degradability, pDNA condensation capability, cytotoxicity and gene transfection ability. They possess good degradability, which would benefit the release of pDNA from the complexes. They exhibit significantly lower cytotoxicity than the control 'gold-standard' polyethylenimine (PEI, ∼25kDa). More importantly, the gene transfection efficiency of Dex- and CS-based vectors is 12-14-fold higher than CD-based ones. This present study indicates that properly grafting degradable PAsp from polysaccharide backbones is an effective means of producing a new class of degradable biomaterials.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, College of Materials Science & Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China.
authors.forename: Hai-Qing
authors.initials: HQ
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, College of Materials Science & Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China.
authors.forename: Xue-Bo
authors.initials: XB
authors.lastname: Dou
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, College of Materials Science & Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China.
authors.forename: Rui-Quan
authors.initials: RQ
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, College of Materials Science & Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China. Electronic address: yubr@mail.buct.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Bing-Ran
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, College of Materials Science & Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China.
authors.forename: Na-Na
authors.initials: NN
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, College of Materials Science & Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China; Beijing Laboratory of Biomedical Materials, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China; Key Laboratory of Carbon Fiber and Functional Polymers (Beijing University of Chemical Technology), Ministry of Education, Beijing 100029, China. Electronic address: xufj@mail.buct.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Fu-Jian
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: Xu
mesh_terms: D005822:Genetic Vectors; D056945:Hep G2 Cells; D006801:Humans; D010455:Peptides / Q000737:chemistry*; D011134:Polysaccharides / Q000737:chemistry*; D014162:Transfection
chemical_list: D010455:Peptides; D011134:Polysaccharides; C017645:polyaspartate
keywords: Chitosan; Dextran; Gene vectors; Poly(aspartic acid); β-Cyclodextrin