FULLERENE C60 BASED NANOPARTICLES COATED WITH HYPERBRANCHED POLYETHYLENIMINE (PEI) FOR GENE DELIVERY

Polyethylenimine (PEI) was extensively investigated as a non-viral vector system due to its high content in amino groups. These provide a great ability to complex and condense negatively charged DNA or RNA. Fullerene (C60), which also showed a good potential in drug delivery, was derivatized onto the surface with hyperbranched PEI. The interaction between fullerene and PEI was conveniently followed by UV-Vis spectroscopy: the characteristic peak of C60, at λ=330 nm, decrease during the reaction until disappearance [1]. FT-IR, TGA/DSC and XPS data confirmed the structure of water soluble C60-PEI [2]. TEM exhibited a compact and spherical morphology of the C60-PEI conjugate. Depending on the C60 : PEI ratio, nanoparticles with diameters between 3 ÷ 80 nm were obtained, as DLS and TEM results indicated. Agarose gel electrophoresis assay, performed for several N/P ratios, showed that C60-PEI has a good DNA binding ability [3]. References: 1. Manolova N., Rashkov I., Beguin F., van Damme H., Amphiphilic derivatives of Fullerenes Formed by Polymer Modification, J. Chem., Soc., Chem. Commun. (1993), 1725 – 1727. 2. Shi J., Zhang H., Wang L., Li L., Wang H., Wang Z., Li Z., Chen C., Hou L., Zhang C., Zhang Z., Pei-derivatized fullerene drug delivery using folate as a homing device targeting to tumor, Biomaterials, 34 (2013), 251–261. 3. Lu B., Xu X.-D., Zhang X.-Z., Cheng S.-X., Low Molecular Weight Polyethylenimine Grafted N-Maleated Chitosan for Gene Delivery: Properties and In Vitro Transfection Studies, Biomacromolecules, 9 (2008), 2594–2600. Acknowledgement: