Examination of structure-activity relationship of viologen-based dendrimers as CXCR4 antagonists and gene carriers.

Chemokine receptors and their ligands play a central role in cancer metastasis, inflammatory disorders, and viral infections. Viologen dendrimers (VGD) emerged recently as a promising class of synthetic polycationic ligands for chemokine receptor CXCR4. The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential of VGD as novel dual-function polycations capable of simultaneous CXCR4 antagonism and gene delivery. As part of our systematic studies, we have synthesized a library of VGD with differences in molecular architecture, number of positive charges, and type of capping group. The ability of VGD to condense DNA was evaluated, and physicochemical and biological properties of the resulting polyplexes were studied. We have evaluated the effect of VGD surface charge, size, capping group, and molecular architecture on physicochemical properties of polyplexes, transfection efficiency, CXCR4 antagonism, and cytotoxicity in human epithelial osteosarcoma (U2OS) and in human liver hepatocellular carcinoma (HepG2) ...