Salem and colleagues have investigated the utilization of nanoparticles that promote the transgene expression induced by non-viral vectors. The nanoparticles are prepared from biocompatible all-silica zeolite materials. The silicalite nanoparticles can be surface functionalized with amine groups that impart the nanoparticles with a net positive charge at physiological pH. This allows the cationic nanoparticles to bind to negatively charged plasmid DNA via electrostatic interactions. The nanoparticle–plasmid DNA complex significantly enhances the transgene expression in comparison to plasmid DNA alone. Furthermore, nanoparticles without functionalization enhance the delivery of genes achieved using established alternative gene delivery agents, such as polyethyleneimine. The details of this study have been reported in Nanotechnology.
This work is a collaboration between Dr Sarah Larsen at the Department of Chemistry, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Iowa, and Dr Aliasger Salem at the Division of Pharmaceutics, College of Pharmacy, University of Iowa. Future work will include incorporating additional functionalities into the silicalite nanoparticles to improve transfection efficiencies further.