Biodegradable starch derivatives with tunable charge density—synthesis, characterization, and transfection efficiency

Abstract

Regioselective oxidation of water-soluble starch and conversion with alkyl diamines resulted in defined cationic starch derivatives. Those were assessed in their potential for polyplex formation, biocompatibility, and transfection efficacy. The new polymers have the advantage of being biodegradable, being not cytotoxic at rather high concentrations (LC > 400 μg/ml) for C2 substitution, and reach transfection efficiencies comparable to commercial transfection reagents. The polymer with the highest transfection efficacy is a C12 substituted polymer (degree of substitution = 30 %) at N/P 3. The LC value of that highly modified polymer is still one order of magnitude lower than that of PEI 25 kDa.

Ethylcellulose nanoparticles as a new “in vitro” transfection tool for antisense oligonucleotide delivery

“…Therefore other alternative materials, like carbohydrate polymers have attracted attention, encompassing chitosan (Rahmani et al 2019;Csaba et al 2009;Nafee et al 2007), amylopectin (Zhou et al 2012), cationic dextran (Hu el al. 2019) or starch derivatives (Thiele et al 2017). Nevertheless, to our best knowledge, ethylcellulose has not been investigated yet for nucleic acid transfection.…”