objective(s): although viral vectors are considered efficient gene transfer agents, their board application has been limited by toxicity, immunogenicity, mutagenicity and small gene carrying capacity. non-viral vectors are safe but they suffer from low transfection efficiency. in the present study, polyallylamine (paa) in two molecular weights (15 and 65 kda) was modified by alkane derivatives ...

Recent progress in tumor genetics, tumor biology, and tumor immunology has renewed interest in the development of tumor vaccines. Unlike the previous generation of vaccines that consisted of the patient's own tumor cells in some form, the new vaccines contain defined peptides or genes with a known function. In order to induce a potent and long-lasting cell-mediated antitumor response, viral as ...

A major goal of nucleic acid based therapies is to treat inherted and acquired disorders by adding, correcting, suppressing or eplacing genes (Abbas et al., 2008). Advantages of non-viral vectors or delivering nucleic acid based therapies include ease of scale-up, torage stability and improved quality control. The most promisng non-viral vectors have been liposomes and cationic polymers hich co...

The development of vectors capable of treating systemic diseases is an important goal for gene therapy protocols. In order for a carrier system to preferentially accumulate at sites of systemic disease, such as tumors, sites of inflammation and sites of infection, the carrier must exhibit long circulation lifetimes following intravenous injection. Unfortunately, most gene delivery systems, incl...

Non-viral gene delivery vectors are emerging as a safer alternative to viral vectors. Among natural polymers, chitosan (Ch) is the most studied one, and low molecular weight Ch, specifically, presents a wide range of advantages for non-viral pDNA delivery. It is crucial to determine the best process for the formation of Low Molecular Weight Chitosan (LMWC)-pDNA complexes and to characterize the...

Quantitative and mechanism-based information on differences in transfection efficiency between viral and non-viral vectors would be highly useful for improving the effectiveness of non-viral vectors. A previous quantitative comparison of intracellular trafficking between adenovirus and LipofectAMINE PLUS (LFN) revealed that the three orders of magnitude lower transfection efficiency of LFN was ...

It has been believed that nuclear gene delivery is the most important process for gene expression, and various non-viral vectors are currently being developed with this assumption. However, some of our earlier studies revealed a surprising difference in transfection activity between viral and non-viral vectors: this difference is largely due to the result of the intranuclear disposition of DNA ...