Engineering of Bioinspired, Size-controllable and Self-degradable Cancer-targeting DNA Nanoflowers via Incorporation of an Artificial Sandwich Base

In this paper, we used an artificial DNA base to manipulate the formation of DNA nanoflowers (NFs) to easily control their sizes and functionalities. Nanoflowers have been reported as the noncanonical self-assembly of multifunctional DNA nanostructures, assembled from long DNA building blocks generated by rolling circle replication (RCR). They could be incorporated with myriad functional moieties. However, the efficacy of these DNA NFs as potential nanocarrier delivering cargoes in biomedicine is limited by the bioavailability and therapeutic efficacy of their cargo. Here we report the incorporation of metal-containing artificial analogues into DNA strands to control the size and the functions of NFs. We have engineered bioinspired, size-controllable and self-degradable cancer-targeting DNA nanoflowers (Sgc8-NFs-Fc) via incorporation of an artificial sandwich base. More specifically, the introduction of a ferrocene base not only resulted in size controllability of Sgc8-NFs-Fc from 1000 to 50 nm, but also ...