Peptide Spiders: Peptide-Polymer Conjugates to Traffic Nucleic Acids.

ABSTRACT: Therapeutic nucleic acids hold great promise for the treatment of genetic diseases, yet the delivery of this highly charged macromolecular drug remains a challenge in the field. Peptides are promising agents to mediate nucleic acid delivery because they can encode a biological function to overcome the trafficking barriers. Electrostatic nanocomplexes of nucleic acid and peptides can achieve effective delivery, but the balance between their stability and biological function must be finely tuned. In this work, we explore two peptide building blocks that have been studied in the literature: targeting ligands and intracellular trafficking peptides. We grafted these peptides on a polyethylene glycol (PEG) backbone with eight sites for substitution to create so-called "peptide spiders". These co

SUBMITTER: Kwon EJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7986012 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature