Self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery systems as novel approach for pDNA drug delivery

It was the aim of this study to investigate a novel strategy for oral gene delivery utilizing a self-nanoemulsifying drug delivery system (SNEDDS). After hydrophobic ion pairing a plasmid was incorporated into SNEDDS. The mean droplet size of resulting nanoemulsions was determined to be between 45.8 and 47.5 nm. A concentration dependent cytotoxicity of the formulations was found on HEK-293 cells via MTT assay. Degradation studies via DNase I showed that incorporation into SNEDDS led to significantly, up to 8-fold prolonged resistant time against enzymatic digestion compared to naked pDNA and pDNA-lipid complexes. Transfection studies carried out revealed a significantly improved transfection compared to naked pDNA. Further, no decrease in transfection efficiency compared to transfection using Lipofectin(®) transfection reagent was observed.