Current Gene Therapy - Volume 2, Issue 3, 2002

One of the most rapidly advancing areas of gene therapy is vector development. For the majority of gene therapy procedures, efficient and selective transduction would provide safe and more effective treatments at optimal vector doses. Advances in vector targeting strategies have been rapid within the field of DNA-based viruses, particularly adenovirus (Ad) and more recently adeno-associated virus (AAV) based vec Read More

Since Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is an autosomal recessive disorder due to mutations in the CFTR (Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Conductance Regulator) gene, studies towards a gene therapy approach to its treatment followed immediately upon the cloning of the gene. It was demonstrated that the insertion of a single copy of the wild-type gene restored the normal phenotype in CF cells in vitro. Encouraging results were obtained in Read More

Despite the development of new therapeutic strategies, cancer remains incurable in most patients with advanced disease. A recent potential improvement in therapeutic strategies is the concept of suicide gene therapy. After transfection with a suicide gene, cells can convert a harmless prodrug into its toxic metabolite, resulting in selective elimination of these cells. One of the most frequently studied therapeutic strategi Read More

Replication-deficient adenoviruses are considered as gene delivery vectors for the genetic treatment of a variety of diseases. The ability of such vectors to mediate efficient expression of therapeutic genes in a broad spectrum of dividing and non-dividing cell types constitutes an advantage over alternative gene transfer vectors. However, this broad tissue tropism may also turn disadvantageous when genes encoding potenti Read More

Autoimmunity accounts for a significant percentage of human disease and remains a challenging syndrome to treat. While systemic immunosuppression can be beneficial, the associated toxicity of the pharmacologic agents necessitates an antigen-specific approach to silence, eradicate or prevent the genesis of autoreactive immune cells. Gene therapy offers the possibility of providing precise antigen-targeted Read More

Traditionally, vectors for gene transfer / therapy experiments were mono- or bicistronic. In the latter case, vectors express the gene of interest coupled with a marker gene. An increasing demand for more complex polycistronic vectors has arisen in recent years to obtain complex gene transfer / therapy effects. In particular, this demand is stimulated by the hope of a more powerful effect from combined gene therapy th Read More

The nonviral gene transfer technologies include naked DNA administration, electrical or particle-mediated transfer of naked DNA, and administration of DNA-synthetic macromolecule complex vectors. Each method has its advantage, such as low immunogenicity, inexpensiveness, ease in handling, etc., but the common disadvantage is that the transfection efficiency has been relatively poor as far as conventional pl Read More