Presentation day

Thursday  8:00 PM

 

TITLE

Evaluation of dendritic polymers as transfection agents

Abstract

Non-viral gene delivery systems promise to be the long-term future for delivering gene
therapies in a safe and controllable manner. However, non-viral vectors commonly sacrifice gene delivery
efficiency for reduced toxicity, struggling to deliver the genetic payload to particular cell lines. Here we
describe the design and synthesis of a dendritic polymer using ATRP, and evaluate its performance as an
efficient transfection agent. First, we demonstrate how the novel dendritic polymer results in self-assembly
with DNA to form positively charged nanoparticles. Second, we report the transfection efficiency and
biocompatibility of these nanoparticles and compare it to the current gold standard, Lipofectamine 2000.
We will demonstrate how the novel design of the polymer enabled excellent transfection efficiency in
HEK293T cells, and difficult-to-transfect cell lines such as MCF7, while maintaining cell viability. Finally, we
discuss the effect of fluorination on enhancing transfection efficiency and serum resistance, permitting the
transfection of delicate cell lines. Through these experiments, we will demonstrate that the polymer
formulation we have developed represents a new class of highly efficient agents for gene delivery.