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Inherited retinal degeneration (IRD), a group of diseases often causing irreversible blindness, with multiple pathogenesis, still lacks effective treatments currently.Development of effective therapeutics is a primary research goal.Despite rapid advances in gene therapy during the past decades, the most challenging aspect of gene therapy in clinical applications for IRD is to deliver the curative molecules to achieve optimal expression levels in target cells safely.Apart from high gene transfection efficiency, there are still many limitations, such as immunogenicity, biosafety issue, etc.in the application of viral vectors, which drive the development of gene therapy based on non-viral vectors.As one of the hot research topics in non-viral vectors, encouraging progress has been made in DNA nanoparticles for IRD treatment.The polymer/DNA complex nanoparticle is compacted and encapsulated DNA via peptides, lipids, or polysaccharides.Besides, the non-viral delivery system shows cost, preparation, packaging capacity, and safety advantages, providing a promising non-viral platform for safe and effective treatment of IRD, such as retinitis pigmentosa, Stargardt disease, X-linked juvenile retinoschisis, Leber congenital amaurosis, and so on.In this article, advances in transfection efficiency, targeting ability and safety of non-viral gene therapy and its application in IRD were reviewed.
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Department of Ophthalmology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Peking Union Medical College, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100730, China
Department of Ophthalmology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Peking Union Medical College, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100730, China