The low toxicity and efficient gene delivery of polymeric vectors remain the major barrier to the clinical application of non-viral gene therapy. Here, we present a poly-D, L-succinimide (PSI)-based biodegradable cationic polymer which mimicked the golden standard, branched polyethylenimine (PEI, ~25 kDa). To investigate the influence of 1°, 2°, 3° amine group ratio in the polymer, a series of PSI-based vectors (PSI-NN'x-NNy) grafted with different amine side chains of N,N-dimethyldipropylenetriamine (NN') and bis(3-aminopropyl)amine (NN) were first characterized and contrasted by biophysical measurements. The in vitro and in vivo biological assay demonstrated that PSI-NN'0.85-NN1 exhibited better transfection ability and biocompatibility than PEI. The present results suggest that such PEI-mimic biodegradable PSI-NN'0.85-NN1 possesses a good potential application for clinical gene delivery.
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