Establishment of Lipofection Protocol for Efficient miR-21 Transfection into Cortical Neurons In Vitro

Dysregulated microRNAs in neurons could cause many nervous system diseases. The therapeutic manipulation of these pathogenic microRNAs necessitates novel, efficient delivery systems to facilitate microRNA modulators targeting neurons with minimal off-target effects. The study aimed to establish a lipofection protocol to upregulate expression levels of miR-21 in neurons under different conditions, including different serum-free medium, transfection conditions, and reagent concentration, by evaluating the expression levels of miR-21 and neuron injury. The expression levels of miR-21 were higher in neurons transfected by Neurobasal-A than by DMEM. Expression levels of miR-21 were already the highest at the ratio RNAiMAX:miR-21=3:5, but the increase of RNAiMAX's concentration had not caused the further upregulation of expression level of miR-21. Neuron injury was condition dependent and dose dependent after transfection. Compared to S-Neurobasal groups, neurons have a smaller injury in N-Neurobasal groups, and compared to ratios RNAiMAX:miR-21=4:5, 5:5, neuron injury was smaller at ratios of RNAiMAX:miR-21=1:5, 2:5, 3:5. Without the pretreatment of starvation in vitro, the lipofection protocol was that RNAiMAX/miR-21 agomir complexes were diluted in Neurobasal-A at the ratio of RNAiMAX:miR-21=3:5.