Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Drug Deliv.
Sec. Cardiovascular Drug Delivery
Volume 4 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fddev.2024.1416737
This article is part of the Research Topic Biomaterial-Supported Drug Delivery View all articles

Dual conjugation of magnetic nanoparticles with antibodies and siRNA for cell specific gene silencing in vascular cells

Provisionally accepted
Katarzyna Karpinska Katarzyna Karpinska Lin Li Lin Li Tao Wang Tao Wang *
  • The University of Manchester, Manchester, England, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    RNA therapy is a rapid expending field and brings great promise to achieve targeted gene silencing and contribute to personalised medicine. However, the delivery of the RNA molecules specifically into targeted organ or cells are still challenging. To overcome the hurdle a number of nanocarriers have been developed with pros and cons. This study was designed to develop a simple and cost-effective approach to functionalise the biodegradable magnetic iron nanoparticles (MNPs) for cell-specific siRNA delivery. MNPs were synthesised based on a co-precipitation method and further functionalised with sodium citrate and polyethyleneimine (PEI) followed by material characterisation using TEM, FTIR and Zeta potential. The citrate and PEI coated MNPs were further conjugated with CD31 antibody and complexed with siRNA and using a linker-free approach. The siRNAs loaded MNPs successfully knocked down the expression of GAPDH in human endothelial cells (ECs) and NOTCH3 in human vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). In a ECs and VSMCs co-culture system under shear stress to mimic blood flow, the siRNA and CD31 conjugated MNPs specifically targeted and delivered siRNA into the ECs. Our approach represents a versatile platform that could be adopted for targeted siRNA delivery in general.

    Keywords: Magnetic iron nanoparticles, siRNA, Gene Silencing, gene delivery, Polyethyleneimine, Endothelial Cells, vascular smooth muscle cells, dual conjugation of nanoparticles

    Received: 13 Apr 2024; Accepted: 26 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Karpinska, Li and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Tao Wang, The University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, England, United Kingdom

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.