β-1,3-Glucan/antisense oligonucleotide complex stabilized with phosphorothioation and its gene suppression
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Updated: Jun 10, 2026

Isolation and Purification of Fungal β-Glucan as an Immunotherapy Strategy for Glioblastoma
Published on: June 2, 2023
Shinichi Mochizuki1, Kazuo Sakurai, Kazuo Sakaurai
1Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The University of Kitakyushu, Wakamatsu-ku, Fukuoka, Japan.
Abstract:
Most of antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) subjected to current clinical evaluation belong to phosphorothioate (PS) analogues. Although PS has great advantage in DNase resistance, it can induce nonspecific side-effects. Thus it is important to investigate the influence of ASOs with different PS contents. In this paper, we prepared the complex consisting of schizophyllan (SPG) and ASOs attached a dA₄₀ tail with different PS contents to the 3' end of the ODN, which is introduced to stabilize the complex with SPG. With increase of PS content in the dA₄₀, its complexation ability with SPG was improved and the complex showed high thermal stability. The thermal stability of the fully phosphorothioated ASOs was obtained by only replacing 20% of the oxygen of the phosphodiester moiety. The ability of gene suppression between PS and phosphodiester for antisense sequences was almost the same, indicating that the antisense sequences need not to be PS backbone. These data may provide new insight for the interaction between β-1,3-glucan and DNA and help to deliver therapeutic ODNs.
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