Insight into the Role of Physicochemical Parameters in a Novel Series of Amphipathic Peptides for Efficient DNA Delivery

Amphipathic peptides constitute a class of molecules with the potential to develop as efficient and safer alternatives to viral and other nonviral vectors for intracellular delivery of therapeutics. These peptides can be useful for nucleic acid delivery and hence promise to have pharmaceutical application, particularly in gene therapy. In order to design novel amphipathic peptides and improve their efficiency of therapeutic cargo delivery, one needs to understand the role of the physicochemical properties of the peptide. There are very few reports in the literature where the physicochemical properties of the peptide have been correlated with efficiency of plasmid DNA delivery. In the present work we hunted out a naturally occurring amphipathic peptide termed Mgpe-1 (derived from HUMAN Protein phosphatase 1E) as a possible novel DNA delivery agent. We systematically altered the physicochemical parameters of this peptide to further enhance its DNA delivery efficiency. We changed its amphipathicity (from sec...