Abstract:
The emergence of genetic engineering at the beginning of the 1970′s opened the
era of biomedical technologies, which aims to improve human health using genetic
manipulation techniques in a clinical context. Gene therapy represents an innovating
and appealing strategy for treatment of human diseases, which utilizes vehicles or
vectors for delivering therapeutic genes into the patients’ body. However, a few
past unsuccessful events that negatively marked the beginning of gene therapy
resulted in the need for further studies regarding the design and biology of gene
therapy vectors, so that this innovating treatment approach can successfully move
from bench to bedside. In this paper, we review the major gene delivery vectors
and recent improvements made in their design meant to overcome the issues that
commonly arise with the use of gene therapy vectors. At the end of the manuscript,
we summarized the main advantages and disadvantages of common gene therapy
vectors and we discuss possible future directions for potential therapeutic vectors.
