Biodegradable Gene deliver: making retroviruses a thing of the past

Gene therapy is a field that has been intensely researched for the past 20 years with over a thousand clinical trials. Scientists have been chasing the breakthroughs (and even fame) that would come with a safe and highly effective way to deliver gene's into a persons DNA. Up until recently the only way possible of delivering genes into a human was to use recombinant DNA technology to insert genes into a virus then use the virus to deliver that gene into a human's chromosome. This of course could be cause for concern since we rely on scientist to take out all the negative effects of viruses and make sure they are completely harmless then use them as tools for altering DNA. Scientists at MIT have decided to start from scratch and have designed they're own DNA delivery system using large biodegradable polymers. The polymer-DNA nanoparticle can act like an artificial virus by delivering functional DNA when injected into nearby tissues. The MIT scientists used mainly three poly(beta-amino esters), or chains of alternating amine and diacrylate groups, in order to develop these gene carrying polymers. The non-viral DNA carrying nanoparticles have all ready proved to be effective in mice. One more notable point about this new method is that the DNA payload able to be delivered by these nanoparticles is much bigger than that of a virus.

I found this article to be very interesting because it not only introduces a new technology that is more effective in delivering DNA, which is very important since the future of medicine is gene therapy. It's also very interesting because it seems as if though the researchers really care about the potential safety problems associated with the old methods and looked for a safer alternative especially to those who might be skeptical of having viruses willingly injected into their bodies.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070907095614.htm