Evaluation of Jeffamine (R)-cored PAMAM dendrimers as an efficient in vitro gene delivery system

Abstract

In this study, we investigated gene delivery properties of Jeffamine-cored polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimers (JCPDs). The effects of dendrimer concentration, generation, and core size on the gene delivery have been analyzed. The experimental results showed that the JCPD effectively delivered plasmid DNA inside the HeLa cells, and the transfection efficiency improved considerably as the number of generation increased. The cytotoxicity of JCPD in different concentration was tested for HeLa cell line. JCPD was complexed with a lacZ gene carrying plasmid and tested for transfection efficiency using quantitative beta-galactosidase expression assay. Additionally, confocal microscopy results revealed that JCPD effectively delivered green fluorescent protein-expressing plasmid into HeLa cells and produced fluorescent signal with satisfactory efficiency. The highest transfection efficiency was obtained from JCPDs G4 and G5, which mixed with expression plasmid vectors at a 10/1 weight ratio. These results indicated that under optimized conditions, JCPD can be considered as an efficient transfection reagent and can be effectively used for gene delivery applications. (c) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A 100A:2623-2628, 2012.