Delivery of Survivin siRNA Using Cationic Diphenylalanine Vesicles

Small interfering RNA(siRNA) has been proved to be a powerful tool for silencing target gene in cells, raising the possibility that siRNA can be employed as a therapy for treating cancers and other genetic diseases. However, siRNA transfection has the limitation due to the difficulty in the delivery of siRNA to target cells and tissues. To explore an efficient biocompatible siRNA delivery system, cationic diphenylalanine vesicles(CDPVs) were constructed to transfer survivin siRNA to human ovarian cancer cells. The morphology of CDPVs was characterized by scanning electron microscopy(SEM) and the distribution of survivin siRNA was characterized by confocal laser scanning microscopy, which reveal that diphenylalanine and the survivin siRNA were successfully co-delivered. After co-incubation for 48 h, the CDPVs/siRNA exhibited enhanced tumor cell growth inhabitation and apoptosis inducted in human SK-OV-3 ovarian carcinoma cells. Overall, CDPVs is an efficient siRNA delivery system and has a promising prospect for cancer therapy.

Redox-responsive diphenylalanine aggregate mediated by cyclodextrin

The molecular assembling properties can be dramatically improved using redox-responsive nanoplatforms, which can bring quite different aggregation modes and binding behaviors in the redox states. In this work, we fabricated a redox-responsive system based on the host–guest complexation of b-cyclodextrin(b-CD) with ferrocene-modified diphenylalanine(Fc-FF). The morphological conversion of Fc-FF can be easily achieved from nanofibers to nanospheres in the presence of b-CD, and the supramolecular nanospheres can be reversibly assembled and disassembled by the chemical redox of ferrocenyl groups in the Fc-FF&b-CD nanoassemblies. These results demonstrate that the incorporation of stimuli-switchable components with macrocyclic receptors may become a promising approach to the construction of smart peptide-involved supramolecular assemblies.

Achieving room temperature phosphorescence from organic small molecules on amino acid skeleton

Room temperature phosphorescence(RTP)generated by small molecules has attracted great attention due to their unique potentials for biosensor,bioimaging and security protection.While,the design of RTP materials is extremely challenging for organic small molecules in non-crystalline solid state.Herein,we report a new strategy for achieving non-crystalline organic small molecules with RTP emission by modifying different phosphors onto diphenylalanine or phenylalanine derivatives.Benefiting from the skeletal structure of the amino acid derivatives,there are intermolecular hydrogen bond formation and rigidification effect,thereby minimizing the intermolecular motions and enhancing their RTP performance.