Work

Cationic carbosilane dendrimers and oligonucleotide binding: an energetic affair

Year: 2014

Type: article

Abstract: Generation 2 cationic carbosilane dendrimers hold great promise as internalizing agents for gene therapy as they present low toxicity and retain and internalize the genetic material as an oligonucleotide or siRNA. In this work we carried out complete in silico structural and energetical characterization of the interactions of a set of G2 carbosilane dendrimers, showing different affinity towards two single strand oligonucleotide (ODN) sequences in vitro. Our simulations predict that these four dendrimers and the relevant ODN complexes are characterized by similar size and shape, and that the molecule-specific ODN binding ability can be rationalized only by considering a critical molecular design parameter: the normalized effective binding energy ΔG(bind,eff)/N(eff), i.e. the performance of each active individual dendrimer branch directly involved in a binding interaction.

Source: Nanoscale

DOI: 10.1039/c4nr04510f

Authors: D. Marson, E. Laurini, P. Posocco, M. Fermeglia, S. Pricl

Institutions: University of Trieste, National Interuniversity Consortium of Materials Science and Technology

Language: English

Topic: Dendrimers and Hyperbranched Polymers

Subfield: Polymers and Plastics

Field: Materials Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W2161027134

FWCI: 0.987

Cites: 56

Cited by: 13

Related to: 10