(498c) Micronanotip Injection Electroporation

DNA or RNA-based non-viral therapy methods have been developed to serve as favorable alternative in cell therapy to their virus-mediated counterparts while still suffer some unsatisfied performance (e.g., low cellular uptake, high cytotoxicity, and/or low efficiency). We envision that the introduction of micro/nanostructures on electrodes could largely advance electroporation-mediated DNA and RNA delivery to mammalian cells. To test this hypothesis, we develop both micro-nanotip injection electroporation platforms and evaluate their contributions to the delivery efficiency of DNA and RNA probes with both anchor cells and suspension cells. The micro/nanostructures offer mild electroporation conditions through highly focused pulse strength and localized poration to the cell membrane. Single or multiple exogenous genes can be programmed to the same cells in a dosage-controlled manner. The well-defined patterns ensure the same treatment to a large number of cells of various sizes. This may bridge two important, but long separated electroporation fields: single cell electroporation and cell electroporation of a large population (bulk electroporation). In this way, it could not only greatly improve gene delivery efficiency and cell viability, but also facilitate mechanism discovery on cellular uptake dynamics and simplify the tedious, cell-specific protocol searching process. Its success will benefit the whole life science and biomedical community where a safe and effective non-viral gene delivery approach is needed on a daily basis.