Comparison between Lipofectamine RNAiMAX and GenMute transfection agents in two cellular models of human hepatoma

RNA interference is a powerful approach to understand gene function both for therapeutic and experimental purposes. Since the lack of knowledge in the gene silencing of various hepatic cell lines, this work was aimed to compare two transfection agents, the liposome-based Lipofectamine (TM) RNAiMAX and the HepG2-specific, polymer-based GenMute (TM), in two cellular models of human hepatoma, HepG2 and Huh7.5. In the first part, we assessed transfection efficiency of a fluorescent Cy3-labeled negative control siRNA by cell imaging analysis; we found that cells treated with GenMute present a higher uptake of the fluorescent negative control siRNA when compared to Lipofectamine RNAiMAX-trasfected cells, both in HepG2 and in Huh7.5 cells. In the second part, we evaluated GAPDH silencing with the two transfection reagents by RT-PCR finding similar GAPDH mRNA expression after each transfection treatment. Finally, we measured cell viability by the MTT assay, observing that cells transfected with GenMute have a higher viability with respect to Lipofectamine RNAiMAX-administered cells. These results suggest that GenMute reagent might be considered the most suitable transfection agent for hepatic gene silencing.