Abstract:
Amphiphilic dicationic surfactants, known as gemini surfactants, are currently studied for gene delivery purposes. The biggest advantages of these systems are that they are non-immunogenic and generally have low toxicity. One of the most important advantages of these systems is improved transfection efficiency. The aim of this study was to determine the possibility to use amphoteric surfactants (zwitterionic derivatives of sulfobetaine with carbohydrate moiety) and sulfobetaine/gemini surfactant mixtures as complexing agents for nucleic acids, with potential applications for gene delivery to reduce the toxicity and improved transfection. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) were used to a7nalyze influence of surfactants on the phase behaviour of 1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DMPC) bilayers with the presence of different DNA forms (small DNA oligomers, cDNA, low and high-molecular mass DNA). The influence of different concentrations of sulfobetaine and sulfobetaine/gemini surfactant mixtures with the presence of DNA on creating stable complexes was investigated using circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy and electrophoresis. A series of measurements of toxicity and transfection of these lipoplexes were performed in HeLa cells. These compounds appear to be excellent for creating complexes with DNA. Thanks to their construction this DNA carrier molecules might be able to deliver genes to the cells of almost any DNA mo7lecular size, unattainable when using viral gene delivery systems.
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