Abstract
Ocular gene therapy offers significant potential for preventing retinal dystrophy in patients with inherited retinal dystrophies (IRD). Adeno-associated virus (AAV) based gene transfer is the most common and successful gene delivery approach to the eye. These days, many studies are using non-viral nanoparticles (NPs) as an alternative therapeutic option because of their unique properties and biocompatibility. Here, we discuss the potential of carbon dots (CDs), a new type of nanocarrier for gene delivery to the retinal cells. The unique physicochemical properties of CDs (such as optical, electronic, and catalytic) make them suitable for biosensing, imaging, drug, and gene delivery applications. Efficient gene delivery to the retinal cells using CDs depends on various factors, such as photoluminescence, quantum yield, biocompatibility, size, and shape. In this review, we focused on different approaches used to synthesize CDs, classify CDs, various pathways for the intake of gene-loaded carbon nanoparticles inside the cell, and multiple studies that worked on transferring nucleic acid in the eye using CDs.
Highlights
Over the last decade, gene therapy has presented as a possible and promising treatment for various genetic disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease and immunodeficiency diseases, and has attracted significant attention in the field of medical sciences
The results showed that poly ion complex (PIC) micelles had longcirculating features and were retained in highly permeable choroidal neovascularization (CNV) lesions for 168 h after intravenous administration
There is a potential interest in producing good-quality carbon dots (CDs) with desirable shape, size, crystallinity, number of functional groups, and types
Summary
Gene therapy has presented as a possible and promising treatment for various genetic disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease and immunodeficiency diseases, and has attracted significant attention in the field of medical sciences. Due to small size capacity, high production costs, high immunogenicity, inflammatory responses, and invasive administration to the retina, viral gene delivery raises concerns [3] This brings up basic research on non-viral vectors, such as different kind of inorganic nanoparticles (gold nanoparticles [4], magnetic nanoparticles [5], carbon nanotubes [6], nanodiamonds [7], graphene [8]) for nucleic acid delivery [9]. These micelles were probably accumulating in CNV lesions through the EPR effect These days, nanomedicine is a rapidly growing research area that aims to apply nanoparticles like metallic nanoparticles, semi-conductive quantum dots, carbon materials like graphene oxide or nanotubes for therapeutics, imaging, sensing, and stimuli-responsive carriers.
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