A dendritic catiomer with an MOF motif for the construction of safe and efficient gene delivery systems

Ethanolamine (EA)-functionalized poly (glycidyl methacrylate) (PGMA-EA) has been validated by our pioneering studies as a promising material for the manufacture of gene delivery systems. Herein, PGMA-EA was schemed to attach at the terminus of MOF ligands for the construction of a nanoscaled dendritic catiomer. The resulting molecular structure was arranged to possess well-defined flanking secondary amine and hydroxyl groups, which consequently exerted drastic potency in DNA condensation (approximately 100 nm) and provided appreciable colloidal stabilities in the biological milieu. Note that as compared to the commercial gold standard of branched PEI (25 kDa), the proposed catiomer exhibited markedly higher transfection efficiency because of the appreciable cationic dendritic structure and lower cytotoxicity because of rational arrangement of hydroxyl groups. Therefore, the present study encouraged the utility of an MOF-motif in engineering spatial functional and biological functional nanoscaled structures for biomedical applications.