Figure 1.

Prolonged gene silencing by siRNA/hydrogel complex. Cells were treated by hydrogel loaded with siR-RANK for 3, 6, and 9 days. Cells transfected via TransIT TKO/siR-RANK was included as positive control, and other controls included untransfected cells (UTR), empty hydrogel (Gel), or hydrogel formulated with siR-EGFP and TKO/siR-EGFP. The knockdown efficiency was evaluated by Real Time RT-PCR. RANK mRNA expression was normalized with β-actin and the relative RANK mRNA expression was calculated with UTR set to 1 and the data was presented as mean ± SD (n = 3). *p < 0.05 compared to untransfected cells.