Title:Intracellular Delivery of Potential Therapeutic Genes: Prospects in Cancer Gene Therapy
Volume: 14
Issue: 4
Author(s): Athirah Bakhtiar, Mustak Sayyad, Rozita Rosli, Atsushi Maruyama and Ezharul H. Chowdhury
Affiliation:
Keywords:
Gene therapy, cancer, nanoparticles, liposomes, polymer, adenovirus, p53, p21, thymidine kinase, TRAIL, cytokine,
angiotensin, interleukin, interferon.
Abstract: 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 types of viral and non-viral carriers to transport gene(s) of interest
and facilitating production of the desirable therapeutic protein(s) has tremendous prospects in cancer treatments due
to the high-level of specificity in therapeutic action of the expressed protein(s) with diminished off-target effects, although
cancer cell-specific delivery of transgene(s) still poses some challenges to be addressed. Depending on the potential therapeutic
target genes, cancer gene therapy could be categorized into tumor suppressor gene replacement therapy, immune
gene therapy and enzyme- or prodrug-based therapy. This review would shed light on the current progress of delivery of
potentially therapeutic genes into various cancer cells in vitro and animal models utilizing a variety of viral and non-viral
vectors.
