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Updated: Jul 19, 2026

Assembly and Characterization of Polyelectrolyte Complex Micelles
Published on: March 2, 2020
Intracellular delivery of poly(ethylene glycol) conjugated antisense oligonucleotide using cationic lipids by
Ji Hoon Jeong1, Sun Hwa Kim, Sung Wan Kim
1Department of Biological Sciences, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon 305-701, South Korea.
Abstract:
A polyelectrolyte complex (PEC) micelle-based antisense oligodeoxynucleotide (ODN) delivery system was designed to overcome intrinsic limitations of cationic lipid-mediated gene transfer. Cationic lipid (Lipofectamine, LF) and ODN conjugated poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) were ionically complexed to form self-assembled spherical PEC micelles. They have a distinctive structural feature: a charge-neutralized core surrounded by highly flexible PEG corona. The PEC micelles could be visualized as a nano-sized sphere by atomic force microscopy (AFM). The DNA/LF PEC micelles exhibited far improved transfection efficiency compared to those of conventional lipoplex formulations (ODN/LF) in the presence of serum. They showed enhanced cellular uptake followed by rapid nuclear localization of ODN in human epithelial carcinoma (KB) cells. In addition, anti-proliferative activity of c-raf gene-directed antisense ODN was almost fully maintained in KB cells in the presence of serum.

