Okan Osmanoglou
The central question of this work is the intracellular release of potential therapeutic nucleic acids, with siRNA as model payload from nanoparticular formulations and the ”First Contactâ of a prodye-siRNA. Our approach uses chemically modified leukodyes, which are colorless, non-fluorescent and sensitive to lytic enzymes. Upon ”First Contactâ of leukodye-conjugated siRNA with lytic enzymes in the cell, they develop fluorescence inside eukaryotic cells and can thus be visualized by fluorescence or confocal microscopy.