Dr. Yupeng Chen with our graduate students, Jinhyung Lee, Ian Sands and post-docs Dr. Libo Zhou and Dr. Wuxia Zhang recently published a paper in PNAS!! Amazing! This high impact factor journal published our manuscript on May 11th 2021, edited by Pablo G. Debenedetti, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, titled

DNA-inspired nanomaterials for enhanced endosomal escape

This brief report explains a new type of delivery system using nanopieces (NPs) based on DNA-inspired Janus base nanotubes (JBNTS) for RNAi delivery. These NPs have composition of current delivery vehicle but with an extra benefit of low toxicity with high efficacy! Similar to Lipid nanoparticles (LPNs), they are delivered via macropinocytosis into endosomes. However, the difference lies in the endosomal escape ability of the NPs compared to LPNs.

They have shown this proof of concept by delivering siRNA to inhibit GAPDH comparing NPs to LPNs and found that NPs achieve better inhibition efficacy than LNPs! In addition to that, NPs also show better cytotoxicity compared to various commonly used delivery vehicles such as PLL and PEI, or single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs).

 

This amazing paper is reported both at the UCONN page as well as Phys.org! Congratulations!!!!

UCONN Page May 17th 2021

Full story at Phys.org