Development of in vitro gene delivery system using ORMOSIL nanoparticle: Analysis of p53 gene expression in cultured breast cancer cell (MCF-7)

This article reports on the application of organically modified silica (ORMOSIL) nanoparticles as an efficient in vitro gene delivery system in the recent years. Based on that prime objective, the present study addresses the possible ways to reduce cancers incidence at cellular level. In this context, ORMOSIL nanoparticles had been synthesized and incubated along with pCMV–Myc (3.8 kb) plasmid vector construct carrying p53gene, and transfected into the breast cancer cell line MCF-7 cells. Western blot analysis showed that the p53 protein was significantly expressed in breast cancer cell upon transfection. The confocal and electron microscopic studies further confirmed that the nanoparticles were accumulated in the cytoplasm and the nucleus of the cancer cells transfected with p53 gene. Interesting agarose gel electrophoresis studies revealed that the nanoparticles efficiently complex with pCMV–Myc vector. The anti-cancer properties of p53 were demonstrated by assessing the cell survival and growth rate which showed a positive linear correlation in cancer cells. Whereas, the growth rate was significantly reduced in ORMOSIL/p53/pCMV–Myc transfected breast cancer cells compared to the growth rate of non-transfected cells. The results of this approach using ORMOSIL nanoparticles as a non-viral gene delivery platform have a promising future for use as effective transfection agent for therapeutic manipulation of cancer cells and targeted cancer gene therapy in vivo.