Special Issue on Nanobiomedicine; Guest Editors: Xiaoping Chen and Feng WangNo Access

Development and Challenges of Nanovectors in Gene Therapy

Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

The author contributed equally to this work.

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Jennifer Rohrs

Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

The author contributed equally to this work.

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, and

Pin Wang

Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

Department of Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

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https://doi.org/10.1142/S1793984414410074Cited by:6 (Source: Crossref)

Abstract

In recent years, hundreds of genes have been linked to a variety of human diseases, and the field of gene therapy has emerged as a way to treat this wide range of diseases. The main goal of gene therapy is to find a gene delivery vehicle that can successfully target diseased cells and deliver therapeutic genes directly to their cellular compartment. The two main types of gene delivery vectors currently being investigated in clinical trials are recombinant viral vectors and synthetic nonviral vectors. Recombinant viral vectors take advantage of the evolutionarily optimized viral mechanisms to deliver genes, but they can be hard to specifically target in vivo and are also associated with serious side effects. Synthetic nonviral vectors are made out of highly biocompatible lipids or polymers, but they are much less efficient at delivering their genetic payload due to the lack of any active delivery mechanism. This mini review will introduce the current state of gene delivery in clinical trials, and discuss the specific challenges associated with each of these vectors. It will also highlight some specific gaps in knowledge that are limiting the advancement of this field and touch on the current areas of research being explored to overcome them.

Keywords:

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