siRNA-loaded poly(histidine-arginine)6-modified chitosan nanoparticle with enhanced cell-penetrating and endosomal escape capacities for suppressing breast tumor metastasis

Abstract

Ping Sun,1 Wei Huang,1 Lin Kang,1 Mingji Jin,1 Bo Fan,1 Hongyan Jin,2 Qi-Ming Wang,1 Zhonggao Gao1 1State Key Laboratory of Bioactive Substance and Function of Natural Medicines, Department of Pharmaceutics, Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, 2Yanbian University Hospital, Jilin, People’s Republic of China Abstract: An ideal carrier that delivers small interfering RNA (siRNA) should be designed based on two criteria: cellular-mediated internalization and endosomal escape. Poly(histidine-arginine)6(H6R6) peptide was introduced into chitosan (CS) to create a new CS derivative for siRNA delivery, 6-polyarginine (R6) as cell-penetrating peptides facilitated nanoparticle cellular internalization has been proved in our previous research, and 6-polyhistidine (H6) mediated the nanoparticle endosome escape resulted in the siRNA rapid releasing into tumor cytoplasm. H6R6-modified CS nanoparticles showed higher transfection efficiency and better endosomal escape capacity compared to ungroomed CS nanoparticle in vitro. Noticeably, H6R6-modified CS nanoparticles effectively inhibited tumor cell growth and metastases in vivo and significantly improved survival ratio. Therefore, we concluded that H6R6-modified CS copolymer can act as an ideal carrier for siRNA delivery and as a promising candidate in breast cancer therapy. Keywords: poly(histidine-arginine)6-peptide-modified chitosan nanoparticle, cell-penetrating peptides, endosome/lysosome escape, gene delivery, breast carcinoma

Keywords

• Poly(histidine-arginine)6 peptide modified chitosan nanoparticle
• Cell penetrating peptides
• Endosome/lysosome escape
• Gene delivery
• Breast carcinoma Abbreviations