Abstract
In this work two novel cationic lipids using natural tartaric acid as linking backbone were synthesized. These cationic lipids were simply constructed by tartaric acid backbone using head group 6-aminocaproic acid and saturated hydrocarbon chains dodecanol (T-C12-AH) or hexadecanol (T-C16-AH). The physicochemical properties, gel electrophoresis, transfection activities, and cytotoxicity of cationic liposomes were tested. The optimum formulation for T-C12-AH and T-C16-AH was at cationic lipid/DOPE molar ratio of 1:0.5 and 1:2, respectively, and N/P charge molar ratio of 1:1 and 1:1, respectively. Under optimized conditions, T-C12-AH and T-C16-AH showed effective gene transfection capabilities, superior or comparable to that of commercially available transfecting reagent DC-Chol and DOTAP. The results demonstrated that the two novel tartaric acid-based cationic lipids exhibited low toxicity and efficient transfection performance, offering an excellent prospect as nonviral vectors for gene delivery.
