Ternary hybrid nanocomposites for gene delivery and magnetic resonance imaging of hepatocellular carcinoma cells

This paper describes comparative studies in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and gene deliveries toward hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) HepG2 cells with ternary composites that are consist of superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) nanoparticles (NPs) (8-10 nm) with deferoxamine coating, circular plasmid DNA (~4 kb) equipped with green fluorescent probe, and branched polyethylenimine (PEI) (25 kDa, PDI 2.5). The packaging of the ternary complexes has been characterized by electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA). By tuning the PEI/NP ratios and with a fixed DNA amount, different ternary composites have been employed for NP/gene transfection towards HepG2 cells, which have been characterized by in vitro MRI and green fluorescence protein (GFP) fluorescence.