Nano-polyplex as a non-viral gene carrier for the expression of bone morphogenetic protein in osteoblastic cells

Abstract The nano-polyplexes based gene delivery using the combination of water-soluble chitosan and polyethyleneimine (PEI) previously showed synergistic effect on gene transfection in a variety of human cell lines. This system simply facilitates gene therapy via a non-viral gene delivery system. Here, we have started to apply this system for therapeutic gene delivery into the osteoblastic-like cell line, MG-63. The transfection efficiency and cytotoxicity in MG-63 were investigated, intracellular uptake of nano-polyplexe was confirmed through confocal laser scanning microscope. Finally, bone morphogenesis protein (BMP) gene delivery was performed using our developed transfection system. The expression level of BMP-2 therapeutic gene was measured via reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Comparing with commercial available system, lipofectamine, the expression of BMP were prolonged. The chitosan-PEI blend polyplex studied here showed the advantages in the aspects of high gene transfection with low cytoxicity into MG-63 cells. This study proposes the non-viral vector as a promising approach for bone regeneration though gene therapy.