Ultrasound-Mediated Gene Transfection In vitro: Enhanced Efficiency by Complexation of Plasmid DNA

Ultrasound-mediated gene transfection in the presence of microbubbles is a recently developed promising nonviral gene delivery method. The main obstacle towards its clinical application is its low transfection efficiency. In this work, we investigate the effect of the complexation of plasmid DNA (pDNA) into polyplex micelles on the transfection efficiency. Complexation changes the structure of pDNA and results in the condensation in size and enhanced stability. Both naked and complexed pDNAs were transfected into cultured cells using ultrasound in the presence of microbubbles. The transfection rate using complexed pDNA is considerably enhanced (from ∼0.92 to ∼1.67%, by ∼82%) compared with the rate using naked pDNA. Our method provides an alternative for the improvement of the transfection efficiency of the ultrasound-mediated method.