Improving gene delivery efficiency of bioreducible poly(amidoamine)s via grafting with dendritic poly(amidoamine)s

Dendritic poly(amidoamine)s (PAMAM)s were introduced into the side chains of disulfide-containing poly(amidoamine)s via repetitive Michael addition and amidation. The bioreducible poly(amidoamine)s grafted with dendritic polyamidoamines showed high buffer capacity, low cytotoxicity and strong DNA binding ability at low N/P ratio. They were able to condense DNA into small sized polycation/DNA complexes, which degraded and released the incorporated DNA under reductive conditions. In comparison to the original disulfide-containing poly(amidoamine) with aminoethyl side chain, the grafting of the bioreducible poly(amidoamine) with dendrimer greatly improved the transfection efficiencies of 293T and HeLa cells with foreign DNA at various N/P ratios. The structure-gene delivery property relations of dendrimer-grafted polycations will provide valuable insight into the design of highly efficient and less toxic polycationic gene carriers.