Centre for Plasma Biomedicine, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710049, P.R. China.
State Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and Power Equipment, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710049, P.R. China.
Sci Rep. 2016 Jun 14;6:27872. doi: 10.1038/srep27872.
This study reports the potential of cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) as a versatile tool for delivering oligonucleotides into mammalian cells. Compared to lipofection and electroporation methods, plasma transfection showed a better uptake efficiency and less cell death in the transfection of oligonucleotides. We demonstrated that the level of extracellular aqueous reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced by gas plasma is correlated with the uptake efficiency and that this is achieved through an increase of intracellular ROS levels and the resulting increase in cell membrane permeability. This finding was supported by the use of ROS scavengers, which reduced CAP-based uptake efficiency. In addition, we found that cold atmospheric plasma could transfer oligonucleotides such as siRNA and miRNA into cells even in 3D cultures, thus suggesting the potential for unique applications of CAP beyond those provided by standard transfection techniques. Together, our results suggest that cold plasma might provide an efficient technique for the delivery of siRNA and miRNA in 2D and 3D culture models.
本研究报告了冷等离体等离子体（CAP）作为一种将寡核苷酸递送入哺乳动物细胞的多功能工具的潜力。与脂质体转染和电穿孔方法相比，等离子体转染在转染寡核苷酸时显示出更高的摄取效率和更低的细胞死亡率。我们证明了气体等离子体产生的细胞外水相活性氧（ROS）的水平与摄取效率相关，这是通过增加细胞内 ROS 水平和由此导致的细胞膜通透性增加来实现的。这一发现得到了 ROS 清除剂的支持，ROS 清除剂降低了基于 CAP 的摄取效率。此外，我们发现冷等离体等离子体甚至可以在 3D 培养物中将寡核苷酸（如 siRNA 和 miRNA）转移到细胞中，这表明冷等离体等离子体除了提供标准转染技术之外，还有可能具有独特的应用潜力。总之，我们的研究结果表明，冷等离子体可能为 2D 和 3D 培养模型中的 siRNA 和 miRNA 的递送提供一种有效的技术。
