Novel branched amphiphilic peptides for nucleic acids delivery

In this study, we synthesized branched amphiphilic peptides with different length of the branch sequences and distribution of hydrophobic and hydrophilic residues. Their applications in transfecting pDNA and mRNA were tested and we found that the branched peptides with longer hydrophobic branches and concentrated hydrophobic residues at the branch ends showed higher transfection efficiency and better than the commercial delivery vector PEI-25K at an optimal N/P ratio of 10 for pDNA delivery and N/P ratio of 16 for mRNA delivery.