Chitosan-DNA Nanoparticles As Non-viral Delivery Systems

In recent years, the potential prospect of gene therapy as the way to replace the disfunctional gene and to tackle the cancer has been widely investigated. One of the major problems to solve is how to develop a safe and effective gene delivery systems. During the process of the development, the obvious trend is that non-viral delivery systems for gene therapy have been increasingly proposed, having the potential to reduce the damages of the viral delivery systems to the healthy cells.Chitosan is a biodegradable polysaccharide extracted from crustacean shells, it is widely accepted that the potential of chitosan as a non-viral gene carrier has been explored, dues to its many important features, including the non-toxic to the experimental animals and humans, the soft tissue compatibility and the cationic characteristic in acidic solution.In respect of the preparation of Chitosan-DNA nanoparticles, the influence of preparation conditions on nanoparticle morpha, encapsulation ratio, loading ratio and release ratio in imitated vivo entironment, has been systematically investigated. These conditions include: molecular weights of chitosan, amino group to phosphate group ratio (N/P ratio) , pH of the buffer and prepatation methods, and so on . All these investigations were made in order to optimize the preparation conditions of Chitosan-DNA nanoparticles, discuss the relativity of prepatation method with Chitosan-DNA nanoparticles character, further paving way for discovering the mechanism of Chitosan-DNA nanoparticles as a gene carrier.It is widely recognized that the molecular weights of chitosan affect its physical properties, including crystalline, mechanical characteristics, permeability, and so on. In previous studies, the peculiar properties of chitosan will not be shown unless the molecular weights of chitosan is decreased to the certain extent. So, the sutiable method to degrade the...