Metafectene is superior to lipofectamine in the transfection of G(s) alpha prostate cancer cells.

Transfection efficiency of the novel reagent metafectene has not been compared with that of lipofectamine in the published English literature. We used these agents to transfect two prostate cancer cell lines, PC3 and G(s) alpha, with a deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) expression vector that generates double-stranded ribonucleic acid (RNA) for RNA interference (RNAi). Cotransfection of the green fluorescent protein (GFP) reporter gene revealed that the mean (+/- standard deviation) transfection efficiencies with lipofectamine were 5.8+/-0.4% for PC3 cells and 3.6+/-1.5% for G(s) alpha cells. Mean transfection efficiency with metafectene declined to 0.1+/-0% for PC3 cells but improved to 54.6+/-5.5% for G(s) alpha cells. With G(s) alpha cells, metafectene transfection of GFP plasmid alone yielded 46.9% positive cells, and cotransfection with CD44v9 expression vector yielded 45.9% positive cells. The visual impact of the transfected RNAi construct was detectable at the protein level 4 to 6 d posttransfection and was more dramatic after using metafectene than after using lipofectamine. Thus, in vitro, metafectene transfection efficiency was sufficient to allow us to assess the functional significance of our RNAi construct, suggesting metafectene as an excellent candidate for RNAi-mediated anticancer gene therapy.