Transfection of shRNA-encoding Minivector DNA of a few hundred base pairs to regulate gene expression in lymphoma cells.

This work illustrates the utility of Minivector DNA, a non-viral, supercoiled gene therapy vector incorporating short hairpin RNA from an H1 promoter. Minivector DNA is superior to both plasmid DNA and small interfering RNA (siRNA) in that it has improved biostability while maintaining high cell transfection efficiency and gene silencing capacity. Minivector DNAs were stable for over 48 h in human serum, as compared with only 0.5 and 2 h for siRNA and plasmid, respectively. Although all three nucleic acids exhibited similar transfection efficiencies in easily transfected adhesion fibroblasts cells, only Minivector DNAs and siRNA were capable of transfecting difficult-to-transfect suspension lymphoma cells. Minivector DNA and siRNA were capable of silencing the gene encoding anaplastic lymphoma kinase, a key pathogenic factor of human anaplastic large cell lymphoma, and this silencing caused inhibition of the lymphoma cells. Based on these results, Minivector DNAs are a promising new gene therapy tool.