Current Gene Therapy - Volume 14, Issue 4, 2014

Conventional therapies for malignant cancer such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy are associated with poor survival rates owing to the development of cellular resistance to cancer drugs and the lack of targetability, resulting in unwanted adverse effects on healthy cells and necessitating the lowering of therapeutic dose with consequential lower efficacy of the treatment. Gene therapy employing different typ Read More

Poly(ethylenimine) (PEI) is a cationic polymer extensively exploited for non-viral gene delivery; however, its wide application has been impeded by its cytotoxicity. PEI can assume either a branched or linear configuration. Whereas branched PEI (bPEI) is more chemically reactive and can form smaller complexes with DNA under salt-containing conditions, lPEI is generally less toxic and exhibits higher transfection efficiency. In thi Read More

Vitamin D is a steroid hormone that regulates mineral homeostasis, bone metabolism and many other physiological processes. The active metabolite of vitamin D, 1α, 25-dihydroxyvitamin D (1,25D3), has broad spectrum antitumor activities and potentiates the effects of a number of chemotherapeutic agents. 1,25D3 exerts its anti-tumor effects mainly through genomic mechanisms involving the regulation of gene tra Read More

Lentiviral vectors (LVs) represent suitable candidates to mediate gene therapy for muscular dystrophies as they infect dividing and non-dividing cells and integrate their genetic material into the host genome, thereby theoretically mediating longterm expression. We evaluated the ability of LVs where a GFP reporter gene was under the control of five different promoters, to transduce and mediate expression in myogenic and Read More

Tumor angiogenesis involves multiple signaling pathways that provide potential therapeutic targets to inhibit tumor growth and metastasis. Regarding the significant role of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in angiogenesis and tumor progression, VEGF sequence-specific small interfering RNA (siRNA) for anti-angiogenic tumor therapy are under development. In the present study, dual-modified liposomes (At-Lp) Read More

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is a highly prevalent disease, which still has unmet medical needs. Therapeutic angiogenesis for PAD, achieved by gene therapy, has achieved promising results in preclinical studies and early-phase clinical trials, yet few late-phase clinical trials have been conducted or have not shown efficacy. This article provides an overview of the progression of angiogenesis research in gene therapy fiel Read More

Gene therapy continues to grow as an emerging treatment strategy toward numerous diseases. However, such prospects are hindered by the use of viral vectors prompting significant safety concerns along with limitations concerning repeat administrations, size of delivered gene construct, scale-up, high production costs, contamination during production, and lack of desired tissue selectivity. Non-viral gene delivery demonstr Read More