Cationic Polyporphyrins as siRNA Delivery Vectors for Photodynamic and Gene Synergistic Anticancer Therapy

Successful gene therapy is highly dependent on the efficiency of gene delivery, which is mostly achieved by the carrier. Current gene carriers are generally nontherapeutic and take over most of the proportion in the delivery systems. Therefore, a library of polymerized and cationic photosensitive drugs (polyphotosensitizers, pPSs) with HIF-1α siRNA delivery capability is constructed to realize using “drug” to deliver “gene”. The pPS component acts as both a therapeutic carrier for intracellular HIF-1α siRNA delivery and a photosensitive drug with photodynamic therapy (PDT). A reactive oxygen species (ROS)-cleavable linker is used to polymerize PS, allowing the successful segregation of PS monomers in space, avoiding the undesired aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) effect and enhancing the in vitro and in vivo PDT effect. The complexes formed by pPSs and HIF-1α siRNA exhibited desired siRNA condensation and serum stability at the optimal conditions (pPSs with guanidines/siRNA weight ratio of 15), efficient intracellular internalization, and gene-silencing efficiency (60%) compared with commercial available transfection reagents (40%), as well as synergistic in vitro and in vivo phototoxicity for the combination PDT–gene therapy toward cancer treatment. This study provides a promising paradigm for the design of both the gene delivery carrier and the photosensitizer, as well as for broad utilities in the combination therapy toward cancer treatment.