Neurons are difficult to manipulate experimentally. Most transfection reagents used for gene silencing are neurotoxic, and the postmitotic state of neurons prevents the effective use of viral vectors. This study demonstrated the delivery of antisense DNA against target genes by gold nanoparticle oligonucleotide complexes (GNOs) in primary cultures of rat hippocampal neurons and in a human neuroblastoma cell line. GNOs were designed to knock down expression of metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5), a protein that has been implicated in cell survival, and were evaluated on their cellular uptake and toxicity. Their ability to decrease expression of specific proteins makes them useful experimental tools as well as strong candidates for drug therapies against neural cancers

Last modified

• 07/24/2018

Creator

• Pascale N. Lacor
• Anil R. Wadhwani
• William L. Klein

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N29B0R

Keyword

• Volume 7

Date created

• 2010

Resource type

• Article

Rights statement

• In Copyright