Transfection and drug delivery capabilities

Measuring and characterising drug uptake

Transfection is the process of introducing nucleic acid into a cell. NPL can measure the formation and uptake of drug delivery vectors and their cargo into cells. We employ biophysics, microscopy and cell biology to characterise and measure uptake and biological activity of nucleic acid and protein cargo delivered to cells. To aid comparative measurements of uptake we can prepare vector standards with well characterised properties and bio-activity, to support higher order reference measurements.

We use microscopy techniques to try to address:

• How much nucleic acid drug or vaccine is taken up by a cell.
• How well is a delivery system packaging the drug cargo.
• Whether the drug delivery system is toxic to a cell line.
• The dynamics of uptake and cargo release in the cell.
• What the mechanism of cell uptake for a vector is.
• How therapeutically active the drug is when delivered with different vectors.

Various bioassay, biophysical and imaging techniques provide a comprehensive characterisation of nucleic acid and vaccine drug delivery. These services are delivered using the following equipment:

• Flow Cytometry (FC) – reporter assays and cell viability.
• qPCR – Oligonucleotide quantitation.
• Particle characterisation – DLS, zeta potential.

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