Nonviral Vectors for Gene Delivery

Various nanoviral vectors exhibiting reduced transfection efficiency, biocompatibality, and potentially for large-scale production, are found to be suitable for gene delivery and therapy. Significant research work is focused on developing vector systems with attached receptor ligands to promote gene delivery to specific cells and tissues. Studies have shown that in arsonium and phosphonium phosphonolipid derivatives, in vitro transfection efficiency in Hela cells increases proportional to the number of methylene units between the phosphonate group and the cationic moiety. DNA condensed with low molecular weight lysine oligomers containing terminal cysteine residues cross-linked to form complexes with reducible disulfide linkages show significant gene transfer compared to commercially available lipid genes. The in vivo transfection efficiency using PDMAEMA shows that DNA complexes injected intraperitoneally is negatively affected by hyaluronic acid present in ascites.