Current Gene Therapy - Volume 13, Issue 4, 2013

Poorly controlled diabetes mellitus can result in serious complications. Gene therapy is increasingly being considered as an alternative approach to treat diabetes, because of its ability to induce physiological insulin secretion and it allows patients to escape insulin injections. The properties of gut K and L-cells, including glucose sensitivity, the ability to process insulin and a regulated secretion pathway support their use as surrogate β-cells. Previous in vitro studies have provided sufficient evidence supporting the use of these cells for gene therapy studies. Therefore, we examined the ability of K and L-cells to produce insulin in diabetic mice. Chitosan nanoparticles were used to transfer the insulin gene into intestinal cells via oral administration. The efficiency of chitosan as a gene vehicle was investigated through the use of reporter gene. Insulin mRNA and protein expression levels were measured by RT-PCR and ELISA, respectively. Blood glucose testing revealed that this treatment reduced glucose levels in diabetic mice. The decrease in blood glucose level in the first week of treatment was greater in mice with K-cell specific insulin expression compared with mice with L-cellspecific insulin expression. These results indicate that inducing insulin secretion in K-cells conferred a quicker response to gene therapy.

Although the excision of unstable pathogenicity islands is a phenomenon that has been described for several virulent bacteria, whether this process directly affects the capacity of these microorganisms to cause disease in their hosts remains unknown. Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis (S. Enteritidis) is an enterobacterium that harbors several unstable pathogenicity islands that can excise from the main bacterial chromosome. Here we have evaluated whether excision of one of these pathogenicity islands, denominated as Region of Difference 21 (ROD21), is required for S. Enteritidis to cause disease in the host. By means of genetic targeting of the integrase encoded by the ROD21 we have generated S. Enteritidis strains unable to excise ROD21. The failure to excise ROD21 significantly reduced the capacity to cause a lethal disease and to colonize the spleen and liver of mice, as compared to wild type S. Enteritidis. On the contrary, S. Enteritidis strains overexpressing an excisionase protein increased the frequency of ROD21 excision and showed an improved capacity to cause lethal disease in mice. Accordingly, strains unable to excise ROD21 showed an altered expression of genes located in this pathogenicity island. Our results suggest that the genetic excision of the pathogenicity island ROD21 in S. Enteritidis modulates the capacity of this bacterium to cause disease in mice due to a change in the expression of virulence genes.

Ultrasound is a common used technique for clinical imaging. In recent years, with the advances in preparation technology of microbubbles and the innovations in ultrasound imaging, ultrasound is no longer confined to detection of tissue perfusion, but extends to specific ultrasound molecular imaging and target therapy gradually. With the development of research, ultrasound molecular imaging and target therapy have made great progresses. Targeted microbubbles for molecular imaging are achieved by binding target molecules, specific antibody or ligand to the surface of microbubbles to obtain specific imaging by attaching to target tissues. Meanwhile, it can also achieve targeting gene therapy or drug delivery by ultrasound targeted microbubble destruction (UTMD) mediating genes or drugs to specific target sites. UTMD has a number of advantages, such as target-specific, highly effective, non-invasivity, relatively low-cost and no radiation, and has broad application prospects, which is regarded as one hot spot in medical studies. We reviewed the new development and application of UTMD in gene therapy and drug delivery in this paper. With further development of technology and research, the gene or drug delivery system and related methods will be widely used in application and researches.

Erythropoietin (EPO) can protect the retina from acute damage, but long-term systemic treatment induces polycythemia. Intraocular gene delivery of EPO is not protective despite producing high levels of EPO likely due to its bellshaped dose curve. The goal of this study was to identify a therapeutic dose of continuously produced EPO in the eye. We packaged a mutated form of EPO (EPOR76E) that has equivalent neuroprotective activity as wild-type EPO and attenuated erythropoietic activity into a recombinant adeno-associated viral vector under the control of the tetracycline inducible promoter. This vector was injected into the subretinal space of homozygous postnatal 5-7 day retinal degeneration slow mice, that express the tetracycline transactivators from a retinal pigment epithelium specific promoter. At weaning, mice received a single intraperitoneal injection of doxycycline and were then maintained on water with or without doxycycline until postnatal day 60. Intraocular EPO levels and outer nuclear layer thickness were quantified and correlated. Control eyes contained 6.1 ± 0.1 (SEM) mU/ml EPO. The eyes of mice that received an intraperitoneal injection of doxycycline contained 11.8 ± 2.0 (SEM) mU/ml EPO-R76E. Treatment with doxycycline water induced production of 35.9 ± 2.4 (SEM) mU/ml EPO-R76E in the eye. The outer nuclear layer was approximately 8μm thicker in eyes of mice that received doxycycline water as compared to the control groups. Our data indicates that drug delivery systems should be optimized to deliver at least 36mU/ml EPO into the eye since this dose was effective for the treatment of a progressive retinal degeneration.

Monoclonal antibodies are successfully used in the clinic. However, repeated high-dose bolus injections imply high costs. As an alternative to recombinant protein administration, gene therapy may provide a novel mean for systemic delivery of monoclonal antibodies. This strategy has been used in preclinical studies of a wide variety of pathological conditions, including cancer, infectious diseases, drug addiction, retinal neovascularisation and Alzheimer’s disease. The two main gene therapy approaches are based on direct gene delivery (using viral or non-viral vectors) or on inoculation of ex vivo genetically modified cells (autologous or allogenic). Viral vectors are highly efficient as gene delivery vehicles and have been tested in numerous clinical trials, but still raise concerns about safety and limitation of the therapeutic effect due to immune responses against viral antigens. On the other hand, use of standard non-viral vectors has been limited by their low transduction efficiency. Practical application of ex vivo genetically modified cells would imply the availability of stocks of “ready-to-use” gene-modified allogenic cells that should be protected from the host immune system. Actually, this field did not meet the expectation raised initially, mainly because of difficulties with obtaining sustained therapeutic plasma levels in animal models. However, this situation is changing rapidly and the therapeutic potential of these approaches is getting closer to clinical applications. This review focuses on the current achievements in preclinical studies, as well as the challenges and future prospects of antibody gene therapy.

Over three years following the discovery of the TAL code, artificial TAL effector DNA binding domains have emerged as the premier platform for building site-specific DNA binding polypeptides for use in biological research. Here, we provide an overview of TAL effector and alternative modular DNA binding domain (mDBD) technologies, focusing on their use in established and emerging architectures for building site-specific endonucleases for genome engineering applications. We also discuss considerations for choosing TAL effector/mDBD or alternative nuclease technologies for genome engineering projects ranging from basic laboratory gene editing of cultured cell lines to therapeutics. Finally, we highlight how the rapid pace of development of mDBD-based, such as monomeric TALENs (I-TevI-TAL), and more recently RNA-guided nucleases (CRISPR-Cas9) has led to a transition in the field of genome engineering towards development of the next generation of technologies aimed at controlling events that occur after targeted DNA breaks are made.