Recent Progress in Biomedical Applications of Chitosan Derivatives as Gene Carrier

Abstract

Appropriate gene carriers are vital components of gene therapy for treating numerous intractable diseases. Compared with viral carriers, non-viral carriers exhibit lower immunogenicity and higher biosafety, which have received increasing attention. In particular, among non-viral vectors, gene vectors based on chitosan derivatives are considered a promising gene therapy tool and have been extensively studied due to the biocompatibility, biodegradability, and modifiability of chitosan. In this review, we first discussed the influence of chitosan parameters on the efficiency of gene therapy. More importantly, we summarized the recent research progress in various diseases of chitosan derivatives to deliver different gene therapy substances including plasmid (pDNA), short interfering RNA (siRNA), short hairpin RNA (shRNA), microRNA (miRNA), and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-associated endonuclease 9 (CRISPER-Cas9) system. Finally, the current challenges and future directions of chitosan derivatives as gene carriers are also proposed.