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Polyurea dendrimer for efficient cytosolic siRNA delivery

Restani, R.R. ; Bragança, A. ; Morgado, J. ; Bonifácio, V.B.

RSC Advances Vol. 97, Nº 4, pp. 54872 - 54878, October, 2014.

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Digital Object Identifier: 10.1039/C4RA09603G

Abstract
The design of small interfering RNA (siRNA) delivery materials showing efficacy in vivo is at the forefront of nanotherapeutics research. Polyurea (PURE-type) dendrimers are ‘smart’ biocompatible 3D polymers that unveil a dynamic and elegant back-folding mechanism involving hydrogen bonding between primary amines at the surface and tertiary amines and ureas at the core. Similarly, to a biological proton pump, they are able to automatically and reversibly transform their conformation in response to pH stimulus. Here, we show that PURE-G4 is a useful gene silencing platform showing no cellular toxicity. As a proof of concept we investigated the PURE-G4-siRNA dendriplex, which was shown to be an attractive platform with high transfection efficacy. The simplicity associated with the complexation of siRNA with polyurea dendrimers makes them a powerful tool for efficient cytosolic siRNA delivery.