Electromobility of plasmid DNA in tumor tissues during electric field-mediated gene delivery

Interstitial transport is a crucial step in plasmid DNA-based gene therapy. However, interstitial diffusion of large nucleic acids is prohibitively slow. Therefore, we proposed to facilitate interstitial transport of DNA via pulsed electric fields. To test the feasibility of this approach to gene delivery, we developed an ex vivo technique to quantify the magnitude of DNA movement due to pulsed electric fields in two tumor tissues: B16.F10 (a mouse melanoma) and 4T1 (a mouse mammary carcinoma). When the pulse duration and strength were 50 ms and 233 V/cm, respectively, we found that the average plasmid DNA movements per 10 pulses were 1.47 mum and 0.35 mum in B16.F10 and 4T1 tumors, respectively. The average plasmid DNA movements could be approximately tripled, ie to reach 3.69 mum and 1.01 mum, respectively, when the pulse strength was increased to 465 V/cm. The plasmid DNA mobility was correlated with the tumor collagen content, which was approximately eight times greater In 4T1 than in B16.F10 tumors. These data suggest that electric field can be a powerful driving force for improving interstitial transport of DNA during gene delivery.