High molecular weight hyaluronic acid

High molecular weight hyaluronic acid (HA) (sodium salt,1500 kDa, purity of 95%) was purchased from Acros organics (Geel,Belgium). 1,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DPPC),1,2dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphoethanolamine (DPPE) wasprovided by Avanti Polar Lipids (USA), while 1-ethyl-3-[3-dimethyl)aminopropyl]carbodiimide (EDC), HNO3(65%), ferricchloride hexahydrate, ammonium thiocyanate, phosphorus stan-dard solution, perchloric acid (70%), ammonium molybdatesolution, amino-naphthyl-sulfonic acid reagent, borate buffer, nin-hydrin, iodine, molybdenum blue and cholesterol were obtainedfrom Sigma Aldrich (Saint Quentin Fallavier, France). Chloroformand methanol were provided by Carlo Erba Reagenti (Milan, Italy).

The cationic lipid [2-(2-3didodecyloxypropyl) hydroxyethyl] ammonium bromide (DE) was synthesized as described (Arpicco et al., 2004) . L-alpha-dioleylphosphatidylethanolamine (DOPE) and phosphatidylethanolamine conjugated to rhodamine (PE-rhodamine) were purchased from Avanti Polar Lipids distributed by Sigma Aldrich (Saint Quentin Fallavier, France). High molecular weight hyaluronic acid (HA) (sodium salt, 1600 kDa, purity of 95%) was provided by Acros organics (Geel, Belgium). pGL3 luciferase (firefly) and control siRNA (19 bp) were purchased from Eurogentec (Angers, France). The HA-DOPE conjugate was synthesized as described previously (Surace et al., 2009) .