Diquaternary Ammonium Compounds as Transfection Agents

Diquaternary ammonium salts constitute a new class of reagent for mediating transfection of DNA in mammalian cell lines. N,N‘-dioleyl-N,N,N‘,N‘-tetramethyl-1,2-ethanediamine (TmedEce), N,N‘-dioleyl-N,N,N‘,N‘-tetramethyl-1,3-propanediamine (PropEce), N,N‘-dioleyl-N,N,N‘,N‘-tetramethyl-1,6-hexanediamine (HexEce), and their corresponding N,N‘-dicetyl saturated analogues (TmedAce, PropAce and HexAce) have all been synthesized and characterized. They were prepared via a bis-Menshutkin reaction of the corresponding tetramethyldiamine with 2.2 M equiv of a long-chain alkyl halide (saturated or unsaturated). The reaction was run in anhydrous acetonitrile for ca. 3 days at 60 °C, which produced the diquaternary ammonium halides in good to nearly quantitative yields for most derivatives. DNA transfection comparable to commercially available reagents such as Lipofectin, Lipofectace, Lipofectamine, and O-ethyldioleoylphosphatidylcholinium triflate has been achieved in vitro with these new reagents. There was no need to use a colipid for effective transfection, but serum did significantly inhibit transfection. The saturated and the unsaturated derivatives differed with respect to hydration behavior. The saturated derivatives appeared to retain a lamellar-type crystalline array structure upon hydration, whereas the unsaturated versions formed micelles and/or liposomes, depending on the ionic strength: HexEce was micellar in both water and saline; PropEce was micellar in water but lamellar in saline; and TmedEce was lamellar in both. Despite these different hydration patterns, all of these unsaturated derivatives formed productive transfection complexes with DNA. Varying the distance between the quaternary sites affected transfection efficacy in the order HexAce > TmedAce = PropAce for the saturated derivatives and in the order PropEce = HexEce > TmedEce, with a smaller spread, for the unsaturated derivatives.