Protein and Antibody Delivery into Difficult-to-Transfect Cells by Polymeric Peptide Mimics

Intracellular protein delivery using simple noncovalent carriers is an emerging field advancing the study of intracellular pathways and novel therapeutics. Here, we directly compare green fluorescent protein delivery using our recently reported protein transduction domain mimic (PTDM) to delivery with four commercially available amphiphilic macromolecular carriers in five diverse cell types. While most carriers succeeded only in serum-free conditions, the PTDM maintained robust delivery in complete media, even when tasked with antibody delivery into difficult-to-transfect neurons for the first time. The broad effectiveness of this reagent establishes PTDMs as a promising strategy for the delivery of biologics into such sensitive and challenging cell types.