Designing idiosyncratic hmPCL-siRNA nanoformulated capsules for silencing and cancer therapy.

In this work, we have designed a siRNA-nanoformulation with mesoporous polycaprolactone (hmPCL) for silencing and cancer therapy. Average hollow core size of hmPCL nanocapsules used for nanoformulation is ~180 nm with shell thickness of 10-20 nm and mesopore size of ~5-10nm in diameter. Idiosyncratic capsules are biocompatible which has been confirmed with normal lymphocyte, K562 leukaemia cancer cells and on HepG2/EGFP cancer cells. In 1mg of hmPCL capsules up to 400 ng of siRNA can be loaded. This nanoformulation enables to tune the dose dependent delivery up to ~93.25% (373 ng) siRNA during therapy. hmPCL-siRNA nanoformulation mediated siRNA transfection on HepG2 cancer cells has been investigated and exhibited 32% silencing activity within 24h of post transfection. Obtained results directed us that the hmPCL-siRNA nanoformulation could be an efficient tool in siRNA mediated therapy for knocking down the infected cells. FROM THE CLINICAL EDITOR: siRNA could be used in cancer therapy if naked nucleic acid could be transported using a suitable carrier. In this article, the authors developed a nano-carrier system using mesoporous polycaprolactone (hmPCL) and showed its efficacy in knocking down cancer cells. This approach may open another way of gene therapy.