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Published on: January 15, 2018
A facile strategy to functionalize gold nanorods with polycation brushes for biomedical applications
Peng Yan1, Nana Zhao1, Hao Hu1
1State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, Key Laboratory of Carbon Fiber and Functional Polymers (Beijing University of Chemical Technology), Ministry of Education, Beijing Laboratory of Biomedical Materials, College of Materials Science & Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
The fabrication of highly efficient nonviral gene carriers with low cytotoxicity remains a challenge in gene therapy. This paper reports a facile strategy to combine the advantages of gold nanorods (Au NRs) and polycations through surface functionalization. Different Au NR carriers with a controlled amount of poly(2-(N,N-dimethyl amino)ethyl methacrylate) (PDAEMA) brushes could be readily synthesized via surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization to achieve optimized nanohybrids for gene transfection. The obtained gene carriers demonstrate much higher gene transfection efficiency and lower cytotoxicity compared with polyethylenimine (∼25kDa, gold standard of nonviral gene vector) in both COS7 and HepG2 cell lines. In addition, the potential of the PDMAEMA-grafted Au NR carriers to be utilized as a computed tomography contrast agent for the imaging of cancer cells has also been investigated. This strategy may realize the gene therapy and real-time imaging within one nanostructure and facilitate biomedical applications.
