Preparation And Characteristics Of Thiolated N-alkylaed Chitosan For Genedelivery In Vitro

Objective To prepare Thiolated N-alkylated chitosan(TACS) nanoparticles carrying gene and study its characteristics in vitro.Methods The TACS/pDNA nanoparticles were prepared by complex coacervation. The morphology of nanoparticles was irregular, observed by transmission electronic microscopy .The protection of the nanoparticles for pDNA was observed by gel elec- trophoresis.Transfection activity of the nanoparticles was evaluated by gene transfec- tion experiment in vitro in HEK293 cells.Lipofectamine2000 vector was used as con- tro1.The effect of the TACS/pDNA nanoparticles on cell viability was illustrated with MTT assay.Results The average particle size was 390nm determined by nanoparticle size analy- zer. The TACS/pDNA nanoparticles could partially protect the encapsulated plasmid pDNA from nuclease degradation as shown by electrophoretic mobility analysis .The gene transfection experiment in vitro suggested that the nanoparticles could transfect HEK293 cells effectively and the transfection efficiency of the TACS/pDNA nano- particles was much higher than that of chitosan/pDNA nanoparticles and lower than Lipofectamine2000 vector.Conclusion TACS as a promising vector for gene delivery.