ИСТИНА

Effective gene therapy is possible only with the use of carriers capable of delivering drugs or genes into the cell and its organelles at different stages of development. The purpose of the work was to study the possibility of drug delivery into the nucleus of living cells at the stage of mitosis. Doxorubicin is an antitumor antibiotic. It was used as a model compound due to the fact that the penetration of this substance into the cell can be easily detected by confocal fluorescence microscopy during in vitro studies. Synthe- sized polycyanoacrylate particles obtained from adduct of ethyl-2-cyanoacrylate and fatty acids were used as a carri- er. Ethyl-2-cyanoacrylate monomers have a number of unique properties, the main one is the ability to polymerize, in the absence of radical initiators, with the formation of polymers capable of biodegradation inside the body (by hydro- lysis and enzymatic hydrolysis). The surface of the particles was covered with a layer of polysaccharide (dextrane) and phosphatidylcholine in order to ensure the affinity of the surface with the cell membrane for better penetration. The best result was obtained with nanosised polymeric carriers of small diameter (100 nm) and with a surface charge close to neutral. The particle size was determined by dynamic light scattering. Such systems are able to pen- etrate inside the cell and also deliver substances into the nucleus at the stage of mitosis; at other stages of cell devel- opment, they are inert and not able to interfere with the processes of cellular metabolism. However, the antitumor drug doxorubicin is only a model compound. In the future, such polymeric carriers are planned to be used for a wide variety of physiologically active substances.