Prospective Cancer Therapies Using Stimuli‐Responsive DNA Nanostructures
Financial support by the Emil Aaltonen Foundation, the Sigrid Jusélius Foundation, the Magnus Ehrnrooth Foundation, Academy of Finland (grants no. 317042 and 331151), the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation and the Vilho, Yrjö and Kalle Väisälä Foundation of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters is gratefully acknowledged Nanostructures based on DNA self-assembly present an innovative way to address the increasing need for target-specific delivery of therapeutic molecules. Currently, most of the chemotherapeutics being used in clinical practice have undesired and exceedingly high off-target toxicity. This is a challenge in particular for small molecules, and hence, developing robust and ef…
Reconfigurable DNA Origami Nanocapsule for pH-Controlled Encapsulation and Display of Cargo
DNA nanotechnology provides a toolbox for creating custom and precise nanostructures with nanometer-level accuracy. These nano-objects are often static by nature and serve as versatile templates for assembling various molecular components in a user-defined way. In addition to the static structures, the intrinsic programmability of DNA nanostructures allows the design of dynamic devices that can perform predefined tasks when triggered with external stimuli, such as drug delivery vehicles whose cargo display or release can be triggered with a specified physical or chemical cue in the biological environment. Here, we present a DNA origami nanocapsule that can be loaded with cargo and reversibl…
Unraveling the interaction between doxorubicin and DNA origami nanostructures for customizable chemotherapeutic drug release
We thank Dr H. Häkkänen for technical assistance and S. Julin for the 24HB DNA origami design. We acknowledge the provision of facilities and technical support by Aalto University Bioeconomy Facilities and OtaNano – Nanomicroscopy Center (Aalto-NMC). The research was carried out under the Academy of Finland Centres of Excellence Programme (2014–2019). Academy of Finland [308578 to M.A.K.]; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [Emmy Noether Programme to A.H.-J., SFB1032 (Project A06) to T.L.]; Emil Aaltonen Foundation [to H.I. and V.L.]; Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation [to J.A.I. and V.L.]; Sigrid Jusélius Foundation [to V.L.]; Vilho, Yrjö and Kalle Väisälä Foundation of the Finnish Academy of Sc…
Dynamic DNA Origami Devices
DNA nanotechnology provides an excellent foundation for diverse nanoscale structures that can be used in various bioapplications and materials research. Among all existing DNA assembly techniques, DNA origami proves to be the most robust one for creating custom nanoshapes. Since its invention in 2006, building from the bottom up using DNA advanced drastically, and therefore, more and more complex DNA-based systems became accessible. So far, the vast majority of the demonstrated DNA origami frameworks are static by nature; however, there also exist dynamic DNA origami devices that are increasingly coming into view. In this review, we discuss DNA origami nanostructures that exhibit controlled…
Unraveling the interaction between doxorubicin and DNA origami nanostructures for customizable chemotherapeutic drug release
Doxorubicin (DOX) is a commonly employed drug in cancer chemotherapy, and its high DNA-binding affinity can be harnessed in preparing programmable DOX-loaded DNA nanostructures that can be further tailored for targeted delivery and therapeutics. Although DOX has been widely studied, the existing literature of promising DOX-loaded DNA nanocarriers remains limited and incoherent. A number of reports have over-looked the fundamentals of the DOX-DNA interaction, let alone the peculiarities arising from the complexity of the system as a whole. Here, based on an in-depth spectroscopic analysis, we characterize and optimize the DOX loading into different 2D and 3D scaffolded DNA origami nanostruct…
Probing the Conformational States of a pH-Sensitive DNA Origami Zipper via Label-Free Electrochemical Methods
Funding Information: Financial support from EPSRC DTP (grant EP/R513349/1), the Emil Aaltonen Foundation, the Sigrid Jusélius Foundation, the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, and the Vilho, Yrjö and Kalle Väisälä Foundation of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters is gratefully acknowledged. This work was carried out under the Academy of Finland Centers of Excellence Programme (2014–2019). We acknowledge the provision of facilities and technical support by Aalto University Bioeconomy Facilities and OtaNano—Nanomicroscopy Center (Aalto-NMC) and Micronova Nanofabrication Center. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society DNA origami structures represe…
Structural stability of DNA origami nanostructures under application-specific conditions
With the introduction of the DNA origami technique, it became possible to rapidly synthesize almost arbitrarily shaped molecular nanostructures at nearly stoichiometric yields. The technique furthermore provides absolute addressability in the sub-nm range, rendering DNA origami nanostructures highly attractive substrates for the controlled arrangement of functional species such as proteins, dyes, and nanoparticles. Consequently, DNAorigami nanostructures have found applications in numerous areas of fundamental and applied research, ranging from drug delivery to biosensing to plasmonics to inorganic materials synthesis. Since many of those applications rely on structurally intact, well-defin…
Dynamic DNA Origami Devices: from Strand-Displacement Reactions to External-Stimuli Responsive Systems
DNA nanotechnology provides an excellent foundation for diverse nanoscale structures that can be used in various bioapplications and materials research. Among all existing DNA assembly techniques, DNA origami proves to be the most robust one for creating custom nanoshapes. Since its invention in 2006, building from the bottom up using DNA advanced drastically, and therefore, more and more complex DNA-based systems became accessible. So far, the vast majority of the demonstrated DNA origami frameworks are static by nature; however, there also exist dynamic DNA origami devices that are increasingly coming into view. In this review, we discuss DNA origami nanostructures that exhibit controlled…
Aptamer-embedded DNA origami cage for detecting (glycated) hemoglobin with a surface plasmon resonance sensor
DNA origami-based cages functionalized with aptamer motifs, were used to detect hemoglobin and glycated hemoglobin. The binding between the cages and hemoglobin was monitored using a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor. One DNA strand in the nano-cage was replaced with an aptamer that demonstrated a high affinity to hemoglobin (Hb) or glycated hemoglobin (gHb). Three types of the DNA nano-cages designed to fit the size and shape of hemoglobin were evaluated: one without an aptamer, one with the Hb-affinity aptamer (HA) and one with the gHb-affinity aptamer (GHA). Both DNA nano-cages embedded with HA and GHA showed significantly more stable binding with Hb and gHb by 5 and 9 times, respec…
DNA Origami-Mediated Substrate Nanopatterning of Inorganic Structures for Sensing Applications
Structural DNA nanotechnology provides a viable route for building from the bottom-up using DNA as construction material. The most common DNA nanofabrication technique is called DNA origami, and it allows high-throughput synthesis of accurate and highly versatile structures with nanometer-level precision. Here, it is shown how the spatial information of DNA origami can be transferred to metallic nanostructures by combining the bottom-up DNA origami with the conventionally used top-down lithography approaches. This allows fabrication of billions of tiny nanostructures in one step onto selected substrates. The method is demonstrated using bowtie DNA origami to create metallic bowtie-shaped an…