The Nanoplasmid™ platform is a next-generation, small cloning backbone with a patented antibiotic-free selection system offering significant benefits in numerous cell and gene-based applications.
Compared to conventional plasmids with backbones often exceeding 2000bp, including antibiotic resistance markers, Nanoplasmid’s small design enhances manufacturing production, significantly diminishes transfection toxicities, improves plasmid performance, and reduces regulatory concerns.
Smaller backbones increase expression1 and durability and reduce the cell-transfection-associated toxicity and transgene silencing that can occur with larger amounts of DNA.2,3,4,5 The small backbone and antibiotic-free selection of Nanoplasmid vectors have proven to be a transformative replacement in a wide variety of applications, offering greater safety and efficiency than traditional plasmids. The proprietary Nanoplasmid vector has been used successfully by many major biotech and pharma companies to develop the next advanced therapies currently in clinical trials.
Aldevron’s molecular biology team can work with you to retrofit an existing plasmid or design and create a new Nanoplasmid to meet your needs. Let us handle the cloning!
Small in size, huge in advantages:
mRNA and Viral-based applications like lentivirus and Adeno-associated Virus (AAV) include the following benefits:
- Higher yield of linear templates for mRNA due to stabilization of the polyA tail.
- Improved manufacturing of AAV plasmids due to stabilization of ITR repeats.
- Improved transfection of AAV plasmids and increased Lentivirus titer.
- Eliminated risk of antibiotic resistance gene transfer improves the regulatory profile for clinical application.
Nanoplasmid Improvement of AAV and mRNA Plasmid Production

Figure 1: Conventional plasmids were compared to retrofitted Nanoplasmids in the AAV and mRNA production contexts. Nanoplasmid outperformed conventional plasmids providing 1.5-5x the plasmid yield in both AAV and mRNA expression vectors.
Non-viral-based applications like DNA vaccines, transposons, HDR donor templates for CRISPR knock-in, and cloning include the following benefits:
- Improved transfection/gene knock-in/transposon integration efficiencies.
- Reduced cell-based toxicities by evading innate responses resulting in cell death.
- Eliminated risk of antibiotic resistance gene transfer with antibiotic-free selection system.
Nanoplasmid is the Premier HDR template for Improvement of CRISPR Knock-in Efficiencies

Figure 2: Nanoplasmid significantly improved knock-in efficiency and decreased cellular toxicity in the production of CAR-T cells as compared to linear DNA and conventional plasmid HDR donor templates.
This figure was adapted from: S. A., Senger, K., Madireddi, S., Akhmetzyanova, I., Ishizuka, I. E., Tarighat, S., Lo, J. H., Shaw, D., Haley, B., & Rutz, S. (2022). High-efficiency nonviral CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing of human T cells using plasmid donor DNA. The Journal of experimental medicine, 219(5), e20211530. Journal of Experimental Medicine
The Power of Small in Action
As the cell and gene therapy landscape matures, Nanoplasmids are becoming more prevalent. In addition to recent internal resources, the technology has been featured in several publications and evaluated in clinical trials.