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Delivery of linear gene-editing systems by cell-penetrating magnetite vehicles: synthesis, characterization and preliminary in vitro testing
1 , 1 , 1 , 1 , 1 , 1 , 1 , * 2 , * 1, 3
1  Department of Biomedical Engineering, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia
2  Department of Chemical and Food Engineering, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia
3  School of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

Abstract:

One of the main challenges in gene therapy is the transport of genetic material into target cells because it has several obstacles like rapid degradation of genetic material by the physiological environment, low endosomal escape and limited cell uptake. A meaningful way to increase the efficacy of genetic material delivery is to incorporate magnetic nanomaterials with the ability to transport biomolecules with easy handling and high biocompatibility. One of them is magnetite, which has been widely used in biomedicine as drug delivery vehicles due to the possibility of controlled fate by magnetic fields and the excretion as ferritin. This study aims to develop a nanostructured platform for the immobilization and intracellular release of nucleic acids with application in gene therapy. The nanobioconjugate was based on surface functionalization of magnetite with an organosilane molecule followed by a surface spacer and a molecule with a reducible disulfide linker to facilitate conjugation of aa thiolated tag, which is complementary to a non-encoding sequence within the delivery vector. In addition, a potent translocating and endosome escaping protein was co-immobilized on the surface to increase the efficiency of biologically active genetic material effectively reaching the nuclei. Once the nanobioconjugate reaches the intracellular space, the disulfide bond is reduced, and the cargo nucleotide is delivered. The delivery of the conjugated material was first tested in vitro with the aid of reducing agents. The conjugated rhodamine was tracked via a time evolution of the delivered molecules with the aid of spectrofluorimetry. Based on our results,we decided to deliver to neuroblastoma, and Vero cells to confirm an endosomal escape of about 85% as calculated by colocalization. Future experiments will be focused on the hybridization of a gene sequence for the expression of the fluorescent protein mCherry. The obtained nanobioconjugate will be also delivered to cells to evaluate transfection efficiencies.

Keywords: magnetite; genetic material; nanoparticles, delivery
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