초록 |
Non-viral delivery systems for gene therapy have been increasingly proposed as safer alternatives to viral vectors, since they have the potential to be administered repeatedly with minimal host immune response, targetable, stable in storage, and easy to produce in large quantities. Chitosan is also considered to be a good candidate for the gene delivery system, since it is already known as a biocompatible, biodegradable, and low toxic material and cationically charged chitosan can be complexed with negatively charged plasmid DNA. In spite of these excellent character, chitosan has the severe disadvantage that is poor solubility in water. To increase the solubility of chitosan in water, poly(ethylene glycol)(PEG) or dextran has been introduced to chitosan. However, the use of acetic acid and other organic solvents can induce the cytotoxicity and make the process of the preparation of chemically modified chitosan complicated. In this study, to make the process simple and reduce the cytotoxicity of chitosan, water-soluble chitosan was used and coupled with lactobionic acid(LA) bearing galactose group as the specific ligand to asialoglycoprotein receptors (ASGR) of liver cells. The sizes, turbidity, morphology, electrophoretic mobility, cytotoxicity and transfection efficiency were studied.
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