Poking cells for efficient vector-free intracellular delivery

Techniques for introducing foreign molecules and materials into living cells are of great value in cell biology research. A major barrier for intracellular delivery is to cross the cell membrane. Here we demonstrate a novel platform utilizing diamond nanoneedle arrays to facilitate efficient vector-...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications Vol. 5; no. 1; p. 4466
Main Authors: Wang, Ying, Yang, Yang, Yan, Li, Kwok, So Ying, Li, Wei, Wang, Zhigang, Zhu, Xiaoyue, Zhu, Guangyu, Zhang, Wenjun, Chen, Xianfeng, Shi, Peng
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 29.07.2014
Nature Publishing Group
Subjects:
13/1
13/106
13/31
13/51
14/19
14/34
14/35
42/109
631/1647/1407
631/1647/2300
631/61/350
Arrays
Biology
Cells
Cytological Techniques
Diamond
Gene Transfer Techniques
Humanities and Social Sciences
Membranes
Microarray Analysis - instrumentation
Microarray Analysis - methods
multidisciplinary
Nanomaterials
Needles
Neurons
Neurons - metabolism
Plasmids - metabolism
Quantum dots
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Toxicity
Hong Kong China
China
ISSN:2041-1723, 2041-1723
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Techniques for introducing foreign molecules and materials into living cells are of great value in cell biology research. A major barrier for intracellular delivery is to cross the cell membrane. Here we demonstrate a novel platform utilizing diamond nanoneedle arrays to facilitate efficient vector-free cytosolic delivery. Using our technique, cellular membrane is deformed by an array of nanoneedles with a force on the order of a few nanonewtons. We show that this technique is applicable to deliver a broad range of molecules and materials into different types of cells, including primary neurons in adherent culture. Especially, for delivering plasmid DNAs into neurons, our technique produces at least eightfold improvement (~45% versus ~1–5%) in transfection efficiency with a dramatically shorter experimental protocol, when compared with the commonly used lipofection approach. It is anticipated that our technique will greatly benefit basic research in cell biology and also a wide variety of clinical applications. The incorporation of foreign objects into cells can be used in various avenues of biological research, although crossing the cell membrane can be challenging. Here, the authors use a diamond nanoneedle array for enhanced delivery of various particles into cells, including neurons.
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ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/ncomms5466