Multivalent Peptide-DNA Conjugates Facilitate DNA Internalization in Cells Expressing Glycosaminoglycans

Nucleic acids (NAs) are emerging as a transformative therapeutic platform owing to their specificity, biocompatibility, and ease of modification. While cell internalization remains a central challenge, advances such as GalNAc-NA conjugates have demonstrated the transformative potential of multivalent ligand displays to achieve cell-specific delivery. We propose that this strategy can be extended to glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), which are anionic polysaccharides expressed on the surface of most cells with relevance in cell communication and the progression of various diseases. Additionally, GAGs are known to associate with cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) that are rich in cationic residues and promote cell entry. Hence, GAGs are a promising cell-surface handle to drive CPP-mediated, GAG-dependent internalization of nucleic acids. Inspired by the success of multivalent GalNAc-nucleic acid conjugates and prior demonstrations that multivalent CPPs can probe cell-surface features, we designed a multivalent display of GAG-targeting ligands to promote DNA internalization. To achieve this, we used a known CPP, Tat, to create tetravalent CPP-DNA conjugates. These conjugates show a striking increase in GAG recognition in GAG-expressing cell lines compared to monovalent conjugates and unmodified DNA, suggesting multivalency is crucial for effective cell-surface GAG binding. However, electrostatically driven aggregation of multivalent CPP-DNA conjugates was observed for which we developed solvation methods that enable the purification, quantification, and biological evaluation of these conjugates. Flow cytometry and confocal microscopy show that the internalization of the conjugates occurs most likely via GAG-mediated endocytosis and revealed that both multivalency and the solvation method influence internalization and GAG engagement. These findings position tetravalent CPP-ssDNA conjugates as a promising platform for GAG-directed nucleic acid uptake, with broad implications for precision medicine.