Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have developed novel polymeric carriers composed of PEG hydrophilic segments and cationic moieties. These polymers have the ability to form micelles, which can effectively load hydrophobic drugs while simultaneously forming complexes with nucleic acids. When co-loaded with a drug and plasmid DNA, these micelles are observed to be significantly smaller and more stable than particles loaded with the drug alone. In this system, the multivalent charge–charge interactions between the cationic polymer and plasmid DNA serve as a simple approach to cross-link the micelles, thus making these micelles more stable than free micelles or micelles loaded with small molecule alone.
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Xu, J., Sun, J., Ho, P. Y., Luo, Z., Ma, W., Zhao, W., Rathod, S. B., Fernandez, C. A., Venkataramanan, R., Xie, W., Yu, A.-M., & Li, S. (2019). Creatine based polymer for codelivery of bioengineered MicroRNA and chemodrugs against breast cancer lung metastasis. Biomaterials, 210, 25–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biomaterials.2019.04.025