Intracellular Delivery of Histidine and Arginine Rich Cell Penetrating Peptides into HeLa cell Line

Most bioactive macromolecules, such as DNA and RNA, cannot permeate into cells freely from outside the plasma membrane. Cell penetrating peptides are a group of short peptide sequences that are able to transverse the cell membrane for mediating gene into living cells. In this study we demonstrate two cell penetrating peptides 5H-R9-C and 7H-R9–7H-C. These peptides are synthesized by solid phase methodology and labelled these peptides by FITC and purified them by RP-HPLC. FITC labelled peptides are efficiently internalize into HeLa cells confirmed by fluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry. Further studies are being carried out to deliver cargo molecule (siRNA, oligonucleotide and pDS RED) by these peptides. These results suggest that these peptides appear to be a promising tool for drug delivery.