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Precisely Defined Polymers for Efficient Gene Delivery

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Abstract

Gene therapy requires successful delivery of therapeutic nucleic acids into target cells; thus, efficient and safe gene delivery carriers are crucial to its success. Although many polymeric materials have shown their potential as effective nucleic acid carriers, the inherent heterogeneity and polydispersity of these polymers hinder their application in clinical studies because of difficulties in their further precise modification, structure–activity relationship study, as well as consistent manufacturing. Therefore, precisely defined polymers, with potential for site-specific optimization according to structure–activity relationship information and highly controllable production, have been extensively investigated. In this review, we focus on the design and development of precisely defined polymers for efficient gene delivery, illustrated with examples including dendrimers, peptide-based polymers, and sequence-defined oligoaminoamide oligomers.

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Fig. 1

Copyright 2015 American Chemical Society Reproduced from Lächelt et al. [6]

Fig. 2

Copyright 2016 Elsevier B.V. and 2012 American Chemical Society Reproduced from Hu et al. [22] and Liu et al. [23]

Fig. 3

Copyright 2015 John Wiley and Sons Reproduced from He et al. [93]

Fig. 4

Copyright 2016 American Chemical Society Reproduced from He et al. [105]

Fig. 5

Copyright 2016 Elsevier B.V. Reproduced from Lee et al. [107]

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 81673364) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (no. 3010010240).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pharmaceutics, Center for Research Development and Evaluation of Pharmaceutical Excipients and Generic Drugs, School of Pharmacy, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, 210009, People’s Republic of China

    Dongsheng He, Hao Lin, Yinglan Yu, Lei Shi & Jiasheng Tu

  2. State Key Laboratory of Natural Medicines, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, 210009, People’s Republic of China

    Dongsheng He, Hao Lin, Yinglan Yu, Lei Shi & Jiasheng Tu

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  1. Dongsheng He
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  2. Hao Lin
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  3. Yinglan Yu
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Correspondence to Dongsheng He.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection “Polymeric Gene Delivery Systems” edited by Yiyun Cheng.

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He, D., Lin, H., Yu, Y. et al. Precisely Defined Polymers for Efficient Gene Delivery. Top Curr Chem (Z) 376, 2 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41061-017-0183-y

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