Studies on the Condensation of Depolymerized Chitosans With DNA for Preparing Chitosan-DNA Nanoparticles for Gene Delivery Applications

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Date
2009
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
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JOURNAL OF BIOMEDICAL MATERIALS RESEARCH PART B-APPLIED BIOMATERIALS
Abstract
High molecular weight chitosan (CS) was depolymerized by oxidative degradation with NaNO(2) at room temperature to get 11 samples of CS derivatives of varying molecular weights with a view to assessing their effective molecular weight range for gene delivery applications. Viscosity studies indicated that the molecular weight of the depolymerized CS was proportional to the CS/NaNO(2) ratio. The condensation behavior of DNA/CS complexes at various charge ratios was studied using UV spectroscopy, FTIR, CD, SEM, and AFM. The results indicated that CSs having very low molecular weights and high charge density exhibited strong binding affinity to DNA compared to high molecular weight CSs. However, the very low molecular weight (1.9-7.7 kDa) CSs were found to form aggregates easily even at very low charge ratios. On the other hand, CSs having medium molecular weight (49-51 kDa) and high degree of deacetylation (DD) gave stable uniform-sized nanoparticles. Biological studies carried out with the spherical nano-sized polyplexes formed between CS of 50 kDa (DD of 94%) and pEGFP plasmid DNA at NIP ratio of 5.0 showed excellent gene transfection efficiency at pH 6.5 in HeLa cells without cytotoxicity indicating their potential as gene delivery carriers. (C) 2008 Wiley Periodicals. Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part 13: Appl Biomater 89B: 282-292,2009
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Keywords
Engineering; Materials Science
Citation
89B ,2;282-292
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