Design and Characterization of a Peptide-Based Nanocarrier, MPG-H1-iRGD, for Gene Deliveryto Breast Cancer Cells

Gene therapy is one of the promising approaches for breast cancer treatment. However, nucleic acid based drugs suffer from their poor delivery. Peptide-based nanocarriers have been shown to improve delivery of plasmid and SiRNA into living cells. To improve targeting gene delivery tobreast cancer cells, we have designed a peptide based nanocarrier, by combination of iRGD, as a targeting moiety, and MPG H1, as an effective gene delivery carriers. Materials and methods: In this study, the coding sequence of this peptide was synthesized by solid phase synthesis.After that, this fragment was ligated in pET-28a Plasmid and transformed into E. coli BL21. Finally, the purified peptide was characterized by Dynamic light scattering (DLS) analysis and gel retardation assay in agarose gel. Result: The result of DLS showed that the purified nanocarrier has a mono disperse size distribution with a mean hydrodynamic diameter of 30 nm. Gel retardation assay revealed that this peptide successfully condensed plasmid included luciferase gene. Discussion & conclusion: The physicochemical characteristics of nanocarrier were in principle, wellsuitedfor cell-targeted, in vivo administered nucleic acid –based drug. Furthermore the presence of an iRGD motif in our designed nanoparticle will be ensured specific gene delivery to breast cancer cells

Keywords:

Breast cancer , Gene therapy , Nanocarrier , Peptide