RESEARCH ARTICLE Non-Viral Nanoparticle Delivers Small Interfering RNA to Macrophages In Vitro and In Vivo

Macrophages are increasingly being viewed as therapeutic target for various cancers and many inflammatory diseases. Sequence specific gene reduction by siRNA represents an at-tractive approach to modulate macrophage function. However, delivery of the therapeutic siRNA into macrophages by non-viral nanoparticles has been a major technical challenge. In this study, we developed a glucan-based siRNA carrier system (BG34-10-Re-I) and dem-onstrated that the BG34-10-Re-I can effectively assemble siRNA into uniformly distributed nanoparticles of the novel core-shell structure. The BG34-10-Re-I/siRNA nanoparticles ef-fectively reduced gene expression of macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) in prima-ry macrophages at both protein and mRNA level. The nanoparticles also mediated a sustained reduction of MIF within primary macrophages. Moreover, systemic injection of the nanoparticles into the Balb/c mice bearing 4T1 mammary tumors resulted in the MIF reduc-tion in tumor-associated macrophages. Mechanistic studies demonstrated that the glucan-shell and the siRNA-core structure contribute to the effective delivery of MIF siRNA to mac-rophages both in vitro and in vivo. This study represents the first development of the primary macrophage MIF gene targeted non-viral nanoparticle system for both in vitro and in vivo applications