Efficient gene delivery by oligochitosan conjugated serum albumin: Facile synthesis, polyplex stability, and transfection.

Chitosan and its derivatives have shown to be potential gene carriers with biocompatiblility and safety. However, their practical delivery is far from being ideal because of the low transfection efficiency. The present work describes the potential of a natural protein, bovine serum albumin (BSA), conjugated with a natural oligosaccharide, oligochitosan (OC), as a considerable promising approach for a safe and efficient non-viral gene delivery vector. The FTIR spectra proved the effective conjugation of BSA with OC through covalent bond. The condensation ability of plasmid DNA (pDNA) with a BSA-OC biopolymer was analyzed by gel retardation assay, competition binding assay, and dynamic light scattering used to measure the nanoparticle size. In addition, the BSA-OC biopolymer showed the protection of pDNA from enzymatic degradation by DNase I and showed good stability when exposed to 50% fetal bovine serum. The transfection efficiency was evaluated in the presence of 10% serum-supplemented media or serum-free media on three kinds of mammalian cells. Our results showed that the BSA-OC biopolymer is a good non-viral vehicle for gene delivery. We investigated the parameters such as the pDNA payload, temperature, incubating duration, and biopolymer/pDNA ratio on the transfection efficiency. This hybrid vehicle had the ability to transfect 90% of cells and to maintain 80% of cell viability. The aforementioned results suggest that the facile synthesis of the BSA-OC biopolymer could overcome the cytotoxicity problem and transfection barriers during in vitro gene delivery.