Natural chitosan has high molecular weight and the poor solubility in water. Water-soluble chitosan with low molecular weight was prepared by the hydrolysis method. In order to develop an efficient gene delivery carrier, chitosan was conjugated with lipoic acid to form the comb-type copolymer. The copolymer with the amphiphilic property formed the self-assembled nanoparticles in the aqueous solution. The average size of nanoparticles was 217.6 nm and the average size of nanoparticles/DNA complex was 170 nm. New chitosan-lipoic acid copolymer showed the low cytotoxicity and 10 times higher transfection efficiency than that of the pure chitosan.