Issue 11, 2022

In vivo delivery of plasmid DNA by lipid nanoparticles: the influence of ionizable cationic lipids on organ-selective gene expression

Abstract

Ionizable cationic lipids play a critical role in developing new gene therapies for various biomedical applications, including COVID-19 vaccines. However, it remains unclear whether the formulation of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) using DLin-MC3-DMA, an optimized ionizable lipid clinically used for small interfering RNA (siRNA) therapy, also facilitates high liver-selective transfection of other gene therapies such as plasmid DNA (pDNA). Here we report the first investigation into pDNA transfection efficiency in different mouse organs after intramuscular and intravenous administration of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) where DLin-MC3-DMA, DLin-KC2-DMA or DODAP are used as the ionizable cationic lipid component of the LNP. We discovered that these three benchmark lipids previously developed for siRNA delivery followed an unexpected characteristic rank order in gene expression efficiency when utilized for pDNA. In particular, DLin-KC2-DMA facilitated higher in vivo pDNA transfection than DLin-MC3-DMA and DODAP, possibly due to its head group pKa and lipid tail structure. Interestingly, LNPs formulated with either DLin-KC2-DMA or DLin-MC3-DMA exhibited significantly higher in vivo protein production in the spleen than in the liver. This work sheds light on the importance of the choice of ionizable cationic lipid and nucleic acid cargo for organ-selective gene expression. The study also provides a new design principle towards the formulation of more effective LNPs for biomedical applications of pDNA, such as gene editing, vaccines and immunotherapies.

Graphical abstract: In vivo delivery of plasmid DNA by lipid nanoparticles: the influence of ionizable cationic lipids on organ-selective gene expression

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
01 פבר 2022
Accepted
20 אפר 2022
First published
26 אפר 2022

Biomater. Sci., 2022,10, 2940-2952

In vivo delivery of plasmid DNA by lipid nanoparticles: the influence of ionizable cationic lipids on organ-selective gene expression

A. Algarni, E. H. Pilkington, E. J. A. Suys, H. Al-Wassiti, C. W. Pouton and N. P. Truong, Biomater. Sci., 2022, 10, 2940 DOI: 10.1039/D2BM00168C

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements