Graphene oxide for antigen delivery system
Referring to a 2016 paper published in the journal Nanoscale by researchers in China, Dr. Rose highlighted the role of graphene oxide as an antigen delivery system. An antigen is any substance that causes your immune system to produce antibodies against it.
The researchers’ primary goal was to find out if their adjuvant antigen delivery system, graphene oxide-polyethylene glycol-polyethylenimine (“GO-PEG-PEI”), would be functional regarding specific immune stimulation, and/or less toxic than aluminium-based adjuvants. An adjuvant is a substance added to medicines or drugs to increase their efficacy or potency.
The study results showed that a PEG-PEI coated graphene oxide sheet was really good at transporting antigens to dendritic cells to induce their maturation and activation when this concoction was injected intradermally. Dendritic cells, named for their probing, ‘tree-like’ or dendritic shapes, are responsible for the initiation of adaptive immune responses.
Graphene oxide for transfection
ThermoFisher Scientific describes transfection as the process of artificially introducing nucleic acids – DNA or RNA – into cells, utilising means other than viral infection.
A paper published in Nanoscale 2011 titled ‘Graphene based gene transfection’ showed that graphene oxide (“GO”) bound with cationic polymers, polyethyleneimine (“PEI”) and positively charged GO-PEI complexes are able to bind with plasmid DNA (pDNA) for intracellular transfection. A plasmid is a small circular DNA molecule found in bacteria and some other microscopic organisms. The abstract of the paper reads:
In this work, for the first time we successfully use graphene as a non-toxic nano-vehicle for efficient gene transfection … Our results suggest graphene to be a novel gene delivery nano-vector with low cytotoxicity and high transfection efficiency, promising for future applications in non-viral based gene therapy.
However, the researchers found the GO-PEI complex was highly toxic to cells even at low concentrations.
In another article, Dr. Rose explained the effects of the lipid nanoparticles (“LNPs”) in Pfizer and Moderna covid injections. The LNPs are a composite of four different lipids (fats): cationic lipids, PEG, phospholipids and cholesterol. “Cationic lipids themselves are terribly toxic,” she wrote.
Read More: Graphene oxide could be used for delivering Antigens and Gene Therapy
