Synthesis of polymerizable amphiphiles with basic oligopeptides for gene delivery application

Abstract

Polydiacetylene (PDA) is made by photopolymerization of self-assembled diacetylene monomers. If diacetylene monomers are arranged systematically and close enough with distance of atoms, 1,4-addition polymerization will occur by the irradiation of 254 nm ultraviolet rays and then PDA will have alternated ene-yne polymer chains at the main structure. Aqueous solutions of diffused PDA is tinged with blue which shows λmax 640 nm. Visible color changes from blue to red occurs in response to a variety of environmental perturbations, such as temperature, pH, and ligand-receptor interactions. In this study, we synthesized cationic peptides - PCDA(10,12-pentacosadyinoic acid) liposome using a solid phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) method and prepared liposome solutions at various molar ratios using MPEG-PCDA. When mammalian cells were treated with the liposomes, high transfection efficiency and low toxicity were observed.