Appraisal for the Potential of Viral and Nonviral Vectors in Gene Therapy: A Review

Over the past few decades, gene therapy has gained immense importance in medical research as a promising treatment strategy for diseases such as cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, and many genetic disorders. When a gene needs to be delivered to a target cell inside the human body, it has to pass a large number of barriers through the extracellular and intracellular environment. This is why the delivery of naked genes and nucleic acids is highly unfavorable, and gene delivery requires suitable vectors that can carry the gene cargo to the target site and protect it from biological degradation. To date, medical research has come up with two types of gene delivery vectors, which are viral and nonviral vectors. The ability of…