siRNA and mices - What is the best way to in vivo siRNA transfer (Sep/14/2006 )

Hello everybody

I've just began PHD study and i recieved a task from my boss - introduce siRNA to xenograph model of PC3 prostate cancer...

I browse web for 2 weeks and i read about diffrentsiRNA in vivo transfer techniques. I was wandering if someone of you have an experience with this and could advise me in this.

I read that lipofectamine 2000, cationic liposome and atelocollagen are good choice... but will be very greatfull for your opinion in this matter

I had injected virus with shRNA invivo.

In our lab, others also injected siRNA directly into their location of choice. The effect is not long lasting and its not very efficient.

I am not sure how u would use lipofectamine for injecting siRNA invivo. Its ok for invitro studies.

For xenograft tumor model, I think the best way of administrating siRNA is intratumoral injection. People have used lipofectamine, ietPEI, and Atelocollagen. Several groups from Japan reported using Atelocollagen for siRNA delivery. Atelocollagen is a cosmetic material and sold by Koken Co , Once I contacted this company asking whether they sell the product in US. I was told they were developing format specific for siRNA delivery and currently it is not available in the US market. Literature on jetPEI mediated siRNA delivery is also scant.

In addition, xenograft tumor is not suitable for hydrodynamic tail vein injection which is effective only for delivering siRNA into well perfused organs such as the liver.

Additional approach would be antibody-directed target delivery with modified PEI. It involves some protein and polymer conjugation work. see Nucleic Acids Research 2004 32(19):e149

pcrman: Have you got some atelocollagen from them? What is your experience with it? Is that as good as it reported?

HI Genehunter,

Because I read several papers using atelocollagen for siRNA delivery, I wanted to try that too. So I contacted the company in Japan and they got back to me pretty soon telling me they were developing it. That was more than one year ago. Now I checked their web site and found nothing new yet.

Judged from the lack of popularity for all these delivery agents, I doubt they are really effective for siRNA delivery.