Biodegradable cross-linked poly(amino alcohol esters) based on LMW PEI for gene delivery

Polyethylenimine (PEI, especially with M(w) of 25,000) has been known as an efficient gene carrier and a gold standard of gene transfection due to its high transfection efficiency (TE). However, high concomitant cytotoxicity limited the application of PEI. In this report, several cationic polymers derived from low molecular weight (LMW) PEI (M(w) 600) linked with diglycidyl adipate (DA-PEI) or its analogs (diglycidyl succinate, DS-PEI and diglycidyl oxalate, DO-PEI; D-PEIs for all 3 polymers) were prepared and characterized. GPC gave M(w)s of DA-PEI, DS-PEI and DO-PEI as 6861, 16,015 and 35,281, respectively. Moreover, degradation of the ester-containing DS-PEI was also confirmed by GPC. In addition, hydroxyls in these polymers could improve their water solubility. These polymers exhibited good ability to condense plasmid DNA into nanoparticles with the size of 120-250 nm. ζ-potentials of the polyplexes were found to be around +10-20 mV under weight ratios (polymer/DNA) from 0.5 to 32. Agarose gel retardation showed that DNA could be released from the polyplexes after being pre-incubated for 30 h. In vitro experiments were carried out and it was found that DS-PEI showed about 5 times of TE compared to that of the PEI/DNA polyplex under a weight ratio of 1 in A549 cells. Meanwhile, the cytotoxicity of D-PEIs assayed by MTT is lower than that of 25 kDa PEI in HEK293 cells. These results suggested that this series of PEI derivatives would be promising non-viral biodegradable vectors for gene delivery.