Intracellular siRNA delivery with novel spermine based surfactants

The design and development of safe and effective multifunctional siRNA delivery systems are critical for clinical application of RNAi therapeutics. Here we evaluated eight new spermine-based surfactant multifunctional carriers for siRNA delivery. These carriers complexed with siRNA forming stable compact nanoparticles with sizes around 100 nm. The multifunctional carriers mediated higher intracellular siRNA transfection than Lipofectamine-2000. The siRNA nanoparticles of the multifunctional carriers exhibited low cytotoxicity as shown by MTT assay. Three of the eight multifunctional carriers showed higher silencing efficiency than Lipofectamine-2000 in both U87-Luc cells and CHO-GFP cells. SKAHCO showed the highest siRNA delivery efficiency among the carriers. It resulted in 84.6±5.5% silencing of luciferase activity in U87-Luc cells, much higher than that (62.8± 3.4%) from Lipofectamine-2000. In conclusion, the spermine based multifunctional carriers are promising for highly efficient intracellular siRNA delivery.