In vivo gene delivery by electroporation

The physical phenomenon of electroporation has been successfully exploited in vitro for the delivery of genes, drugs, and other molecules with increas ing frequency over the past two decades. This type of electrically mediated delivery has been translated into an in vivo setting in more recent years with a focus on therapeutic molecules. One promising area is the delivery o f genes as a therapy. Advances in molecular medicine have produced a very large amount of informa tion about genes that translate to therapeutic molecules when expressed in living cells. Current standard methods for transferring genes utilize virus es to deliver DNA into cells. These viral methods have not yielded optimal results in most cases. Therefore, there is an increasing interest in nonvir al methods for gene delivery. In vivo electrically mediated gene delivery i s an attractive alternative because of the site specific nature of delivery as well as the universal applicability of electroporation. A review of the studies performed to investigate and develop this new gene delivery techno logy is presented. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.