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Updated: Jan 22, 2026

Predicting Gene Silencing Through the Spatiotemporal Control of siRNA Release from Photo-responsive Polymeric Nanocarriers
Published on: July 21, 2017
Natural Polysaccharides for siRNA Delivery: Nanocarriers Based on Chitosan, Hyaluronic Acid, and Their Derivatives
Inés Serrano-Sevilla1,2, Álvaro Artiga1,2, Scott G Mitchell1,2
1Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Aragón (ICMA), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)-Universidad de Zaragoza, C/Pedro Cerbuna 12, 50009 Zaragoza, Spain.
Abstract:
Natural polysaccharides are frequently used in the design of drug delivery systems due to their biocompatibility, biodegradability, and low toxicity. Moreover, they are diverse in structure, size, and charge, and their chemical functional groups can be easily modified to match the needs of the final application and mode of administration. This review focuses on polysaccharidic nanocarriers based on chitosan and hyaluronic acid for small interfering RNA (siRNA) delivery, which are highly positively and negatively charged, respectively. The key properties, strengths, and drawbacks of each polysaccharide are discussed. In addition, their use as efficient nanodelivery systems for gene silencing applications is put into context using the most recent examples from the literature. The latest advances in this field illustrate effectively how chitosan and hyaluronic acid can be modified or associated with other molecules in order to overcome their limitations to produce optimized siRNA delivery systems with promising in vitro and in vivo results.
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