School of Medicine Publications and Presentations

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-25-2022

Abstract

Background: The use of gene therapy to treat prostate cancer is hampered by the lack of effective nanocarriers that can selectively deliver therapeutic genes to cancer cells. To overcome this, we hypothesize that conjugating lactoferrin, a tumor-targeting ligand, and the diaminobutyric polypropylenimine dendrimer into gold nanocages, followed by complexation with a plasmid DNA, would enhance gene expression and anti-proliferation activity in prostate cancer cells without the use of external stimuli.

Methods: Novel gold nanocages bearing lactoferrin and conjugated to diaminobutyric polypropylenimine dendrimer (AuNCs-DABLf) were synthesized and characterized. Following complexation with a plasmid DNA, their gene expression, cellular uptake and antiproliferative efficacies were evaluated on PC-3 prostate cancer cells.

Results: AuNCs-DAB-Lf was able to complex DNA at conjugate: DNAweight ratios 5:1 onwards. Gene expression was at its highest after treatment with AuNCs-DAB-Lf at a weight ratio of 10:1, as a result of a significant increase in DNA uptake mediated by the conjugate at that ratio in PC-3 cells. Consequently, the anti-proliferative activity of AuNCs-DAB-Lf-DNA encoding TNFα was significantly improved by up to 9-fold compared with DAB dendriplex encoding TNFα.

Conclusion: Lactoferrin-bearing dendrimer-conjugated gold nanocages are highly promising gene delivery systems for the treatment of prostate cancer.

Comments

© 2022 Almowalad et al.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License

Publication Title

International Journal of Nanomedicine

DOI

10.2147/IJN.S347574

Academic Level

faculty

Mentor/PI Department

Immunology and Microbiology

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