Arginine-conjugated polypropylenimine dendrimer as a non-toxic and efficient gene delivery carrier

We synthesized arginine-conjugated polypropylenimine dendrimer G2 (DAB-8), PPI2-R for gene delivery systems. Synthesized PPI2-R could retard plasmid DNA at a weight ratio of 4 completely and PPI2-R polyplexes showed a fluorescence of less than 10% over a charge ratio of 2 by PicoGreen reagent assay, suggesting its good DNA condensing ability. The size of PPI2-R polyplex was measured to about 200 nm at a charge ratio of 150. PPI2-R displayed 80–90% cell viability at even a 150 μg/mL concentration. Transfection efficiency of PPI2-R was found to be high comparable to that of PEI25kD and to be 8–214 times higher than that of unmodified PPI2 on HeLa and 293 cells. Moreover, PPI2-R showed 4 times higher transfection efficiency than PEI25kD, treating with 10 μg pDNA because of its low cytotoxicity on HeLa cells. Finally, PPI2-R showed a transfection efficiency 2–3 times higher than PEI25kD on HUVECs, showing its potency as a gene delivery carrier for primary cells. These results demonstrate that arginine-conjugation of PPI2 is successful in developing a low toxic and highly transfection efficient gene delivery carrier.