Exp Mol Med.  1997 Jun;29(2):111-116.

Lactoferrin as a gene delivery vehicle to hepatocytes

• Oh ST
• Rih JK
• Kwon HS
• Hwang DS
• Kim SY
• Yim JB

Abstract

Using lactoferrin as the specific ligand, we developed a simplified method for preparation of molecular conjugate for gene delivery. Replacement of column chromatography and dialysis by one step centrifugal filtration (Centricon, cut off size : 30,000), resulted in the rapid purification of bovine lactoferrin/polylysine (bLf/pL) and human lactoferrin/polylysine (hLf/pL) conjugates and easy separation of unconjugated polylysine. The Lf/pL conjugates prepared by this method efficiently transferred the reporter genes, CAT and LacZ gene, to HeLa and hepatic cells. The bLf/pL and hLf/pL conjugates could transfer the reporter genes to various hepatocytes including primary mouse hepatocyte, Hepa 1-6, SK-Hep1 and Chang liver, but not to NIH 3T3 mouse fibroblast cells, indicating that the Lf/pL conjugates conferred hepatocyte-specific gene transfer. The bLf/pL and hLf/pL conjugates prepared in the present study exhibited higher transfection efficiencies for mouse and human hepatocytes than the commercially available transferrin/polylysine (Tf/pL) conjugate.

Keyword

lactoferrin; poly-L-lysine; gene delivery

MeSH Terms

Animals
Cats
Chromatography
Dialysis
Fibroblasts
Filtration
Genes, Reporter
Genes, vif*
Hepatocytes*
Humans
Lac Operon
Lactoferrin*
Liver
Mice
Polylysine
Transfection
Lactoferrin
Polylysine