Intracellular Delivery of Bioactive Cargos to Hard-to-Transfect Cells Using Carbon Nanosyringe Arrays under an Applied Centrifugal g-Force

Abstract

There is considerable interest in developing a common, universal platform for delivering biomacromolecules such as proteins and RNAs into diverse cells with high efficiency. Here, it is shown that carbon nanosyringe arrays (CNSAs) under an applied centrifugal g-force (cf-CNSAs) can deliver diverse bioactive cargos directly into the cytosol of hard-to-transfect cells with relatively high efficiency and reproducibility. The cf-CNSA platform, an optimized version of a previous CNSA-mediated intracellular delivery platform that adds a g-force feature, exhibits more rapid and superior delivery of cargos to various hard-to-transfect cells than is the case in the absence of g-force. Active species, including small interfering RNAs, plasmids, and proteins are successfully transported across plasma membrane barriers into various cells. By overcoming the limitations of currently available transfection methods, the cf-CNSA platform paves the way to universal delivery of a variety of cargos, facilitating the analysis of cellular responses in diverse cell types.