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Studies on the condensation of depolymerized chitosans with DNA for preparing chitosan‐DNA nanoparticles for gene delivery applications
Author(s) -
Morris Viola B.,
Neethu S.,
Abraham T. E.,
Pillai C. K. S.,
Sharma Chandra P.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of biomedical materials research part b: applied biomaterials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.665
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 1552-4981
pISSN - 1552-4973
DOI - 10.1002/jbm.b.31214
Subject(s) - dna condensation , chitosan , molecular mass , materials science , nanoparticle , gene delivery , hela , transfection , dna , fourier transform infrared spectroscopy , cytotoxicity , nuclear chemistry , molar mass distribution , chemical engineering , polymer , nanotechnology , organic chemistry , in vitro , gene , chemistry , biochemistry , engineering , composite material , enzyme
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 N / P ratio of 5.0 showed excellent gene transfection efficiency at pH 6.5 in HeLa cells without cytotoxicity indicating their potential as genedelivery carriers. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater, 2009