Gene delivery

Gene delivery inspired by Nature

Are you also impressed by the power of Nature? Viruses for instance are very efficient in invading cells. They do that thanks to the capability of guanidinium group of amino acid arginine present in cell penetrating peptides.
Gene delivery
Image: FSU Jena / Prof. Dr. Kalina Peneva

Published:

By the inspiration of this natural phenomenon, we constructed a guanidinium bearing poly(methacrylamide) library to investigate the impact of various physicochemical features of the polymers and their gene delivery efficiency in the frame of the Collaborative Research Center PolyTarget.

In the recent work performed by the groups of Prof. Dr. Kalina Peneva and Prof. Dr. Dagmar Fischer, we managed to improve the transfection efficiency by including indole, phenol and phenyl units, mimicking the amino acid tryptophan, phenylalanine and tyrosine into guanidinium containing poly(methacrylamide)s. The synergy of hydrophobic and guanidinium groups led to significantly higher transfection efficiency of the polymers.

You can find the full article titled “Indole, Phenyl, and Phenol Groups: The Role of the Comonomer on Gene Delivery in Guanidinium Containing Methacrylamide Terpolymers” hereExternal link.