Abstract

An ideal carrier that delivers small interfering RNA (siRNA) should be designed based on two criteria: high gene transfection efficiency and low cytotoxicity. In this work, arginine was used to modify polyvinylamine (PVAm) to form a novel PVAm derivative (PVAm-Arg) for siRNA delivery and the derivative was characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. PVAm-Arg/siRNA complexes were formed by the self-assembly method. The zeta potential and size of the complexes were measured using electrophoretic light scattering and dynamic light scattering, respectively. The siRNA binding capacity of PVAm-Arg was assessed using gel retardation assay. The results showed that PVAm-Arg derivatives can bind siRNA effectively and form complexes with sizes of about 72 ± 2 nm. What is more, the ability of PVAm-Arg to condense siRNA was better than that of PVAm. Cytotoxicity assay with RSC96 cells also showed that PVAm-Arg had lower cytotoxicity compared with PVAm. In in vitro cellular uptake assay, PVAm-Arg showed good transfection efficiency. Therefore, we concluded that PVAm-Arg would be a promising candidate as a gene delivery vector. © 2022 Society of Industrial Chemistry.