A fluorinated dendrimer achieves excellent gene transfection efficacy at extremely low nitrogen to phosphorus ratios.

Polymers have shown great promise in the design of high efficient and low cytotoxic gene vectors. Here we synthesize fluorinated dendrimers for use as gene vectors. Fluorinated dendrimers achieve excellent gene transfection efficacy in several cell lines (higher than 90% in HEK293 and HeLa cells) at extremely low N/P ratios. These polymers show superior efficacy and biocompatibility compared with several commercial transfection reagents such as Lipofectamine 2000 and SuperFect. Fluorination enhances the cellular uptake of the dendrimer/DNA polyplexes and facilitates their endosomal escape. In addition, the fluorinated dendrimer shows excellent serum resistance and exhibits high gene transfection efficacy even in medium containing 50% FBS. The results suggest that fluorinated dendrimers are a new class of highly efficient gene vectors and fluorination is a promising strategy to design gene vectors without involving sophisticated syntheses.