Logo image
Chapter 19 - Lipid-based synthetic gene carriers
Book chapter

Chapter 19 - Lipid-based synthetic gene carriers

Nily Dan
Nanostructures for Novel Therapy, pp 517-538
2017

Abstract

DNA gene therapy kinetics lipoplexes nonviral carriers self-assembly siRNA
Gene therapy and gene silencing techniques are based on the insertion of nucleic acids (DNA or siRNA) into cells, with the goal of inducing therapeutic changes in cell functions. The need for carriers to facilitate this transfection process led to the study of lipid-nucleic acid assemblies, such as lipoplexes. The efficacy of lipoplexes is linked to their structure: the local, nanoscale structure of lipoplexes is an equilibrium feature, determined by lipid properties and complex composition. Larger-scale characteristics are, however, controlled by the assembly route and kinetics. This chapter reviews the equilibrium properties of lipoplexes and the kinetics pathways for their formation. Better understanding of lipoplex formation can not only lead to the design of effective nucleic acid lipoplex-based gene delivery or silencing agents, but is also of interest as a fundamental multicomponent, multilength-scale and multitime scale process.

Metrics

2 Record Views
2 citations in Scopus

Details

Logo image