The Cell Uptake of Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles Carrying DNA in Vitro

Abstract： The application of mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSN) in gene carrying get more and more researchers' attention with its superior properties. In this paper, we researched the two kinds of cancer cell uptake of the MSNs that carried different DNA. The small molecule nucleic acid can successfully access into the interal pore of the nanoparticles with large quantitives, and the MSNs also play a good protection effect on the DNA absorbed. Interestingly, the more quantities DNA loaded the more MSNs were internalized by cancer cells. And compare with the uptake of the HeLa cells and HepG2 cells, the overall trend were similar except a little difference about the N-MSNs and the N-MSNs loaded low concentration DNA. In addition to this the cytotoxicity of the MSNs examined by MTT assay demonstrated that the MSNs possess good biocompatibility. So the MSNs can load large quantities small molecule nucleic acid and internalized by cancer cells efficiently. The findings provide a support for clinical research of gene therapy.