The importance of molecular structure and functionalization of oxographene sheets for gene silencing

Gene therapy has recently reached the front line in the treatments of different diseases. Although graphene oxide has been widely used as a gene vector, its clinical application is limited by its scarce inhomogeneity due to the different synthetic methods adopted for its synthesis. Recently, we have developed the preparation of a new classof graphene oxide, named oxo -G,obtained by a rigorous synthetic method with controlled size and surface chemistry. oxo-G has been successfully applied for the production of reduced graphene oxide with remarkable conductivity. Here, we applied oxo-G to gene delivery. After ad hoc functionalization, we found that oxo-G is able to efficiently complex siRNA and strongly induce gene silencing in vitro at 5 pg/cell doses, more than 1 order of magnitude lower than the best results reported in the literature using graphene-based materials. The aim of this work is to inspire the readers to develop further oxo-G materials for biomedical applications. We hope that oxo-G may be considered as an alternative candidate in future gene silencing use in vivo.