1. Key Laboratory of Biomedical Polymers of Ministry of Education & Department of Chemistry, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, P. R. China;2. School of Pharmaceutical Science, Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214122, P. R. China
Abstract:
In this study, two types of BolA‐like amphiphilic peptides with dual ligands comprising a tumor‐targeting moiety of RGD sequence and a cell‐penetrating moiety of R8 sequence are designed and synthesized as gene vectors. The BolA‐structural peptide carriers can self‐assemble into spherical nanoparticles with a hydrophilic core and shell, which are similar to the viral capsid and can bind plasmid DNA in an aqueous medium to form viral‐mimetic complexes. It is found that the BolA‐like dual ligands system exhibits significantly enhanced gene expression in both HeLa and 293T cell lines, as compared with poly(ethylenimine) PEI. These BolA‐like amphiphilic peptides are promising in clinical trials of gene therapy.
