Trehalose-based Janus cyclooligosaccharides: the ‘‘Click’’ synthesis and DNA-directed assembly into pH-sensitive transfectious nanoparticles

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.-- et al.The convergent preparation of Janus molecular nanoparticles by thiourea-‘‘clicking’’ of a,a0 -trehalose halves has been implemented; the strategy allows access to macrocyclic derivatives with seggregated cationic and lipophilic domains that in the presence of DNA undergo pH-dependent self-assembly into lamellar superstructures, as established by electrochemical, structural (SAXS), microscopical (TEM) and computational techniques, that mediate transfection in vitro and in vivo.We acknowledge support by the CSIC Open Access Publication Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI).The authors thank MINECO (contract numbers CTQ2012- 30821, SAF2013-44021-R, CTQ2015-64425-C2-1-R and CTQ2015-64425-C2-2-R), the Junta de Andalucía (contract number FQM2012-1467), University Complutense of Madrid (project no. UCMA05-33-010), the Government of Navarra (Department of Innovation and Industry, contract number IIQ14334.RI1), the University of Navarra Foundation (FUN), and the European Regional Development Funds (FEDER and FSE) for financial support.Peer reviewe