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Updated: Apr 26, 2026
Gene Transfection toward Spheroid Cells on Micropatterned Culture Plates for Genetically-modified Cell Transplantation
Published on: July 31, 2015
Stimulation of gene transfection by silicon nanowire arrays modified with polyethylenimine
Jingjing Pan1, Zhonglin Lyu, Wenwen Jiang
1The Key Lab of Health Chemistry and Molecular Diagnosis of Suzhou, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University , Suzhou 215123, P. R. China.
Abstract:
In this work, a novel gene delivery strategy was proposed based on silicon nanowire arrays modified with high-molecular-weight 25 kDa branched polyethylenimine (SN-PEI). Both the plasmid DNA (pDNA) binding capacity and the in vitro gene transfection efficiency of silicon nanowire arrays (SiNWAs) were significantly enhanced after modification with high-molecular-weight bPEI. Moreover, the transfection efficiency was substantially further increased by the introduction of free pDNA/PEI complexes formed by low-molecular-weight branched PEI (bPEI, 2 kDa). Additionally, factors affecting the in vitro transfection efficiency of the novel gene delivery system were investigated in detail, and the transfection efficiency was optimized on SN-PEI with a bPEI grafting time of 3 h, an incubation time of 10 min for tethered pDNA/PEI complexes consisting of high-molecular-weight bPEI grafted onto SiNWAs, and with an N/P ratio of 80 for free pDNA/PEI complexes made of low-molecular-weight bPEI. Together, our results indicate that high-molecular-weight bPEI modified SiNWAs can serve as an efficient platform for gene delivery.
