Multifunctional Poly(2-oxazoline) Nanoparticles for Biological Applications.

New multifunctional copoly(2-oxazoline) nanoparticles were prepared for cell studies. The polymer contains double-bond side chains as potential reaction sites for "thio"-click reactions as well as a fluorescein label covalently bound to the polymer backbone. Using the nanoprecipitation technique, spherical nanoparticles of 200-800 nm were obtained.

Cell-specific RNA interference by peptide-inhibited-peptidase-activated siRNAs.

The use of chemically-synthesized short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) is the key method of choice to manipulate gene expression in mammalian cell cultures and in vivo. Several previous studies have aimed at inducing cell-specific RNA interference (RNAi) in order to use siRNA molecules as therapeutic reagents. Here, we used peptide-inhibited siRNAs that were activated after cleavage by cell-specific peptidases.