Abstract
Chronic pain is a major health concern that affects millions of people. There are no adequate long-term therapies for chronic pain sufferers, leading to significant cost for both society and the individual. The most commonly used therapy for chronic pain is the application of opioid analgesics and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, but these drugs can lead to addiction and may cause side effects. Further studies of the mechanisms of chronic pain have opened the way for development of new treatment strategies, one of which is gene therapy. The key to gene therapy is selecting safe and highly efficient gene delivery systems that can deliver therapeutic genes to overexpress or suppress relevant targets in specific cell types. Here we review several promising viral vectors that could be applied in gene transfer for the treatment of chronic pain and further discuss the possible mechanisms of genes of interest that could be delivered with viral vectors for the treatment of chronic pain.
Highlights
Chronic pain is defined by the U.S Food and Drug Administration as pain that persists for more than 3 months [1]
Murine leukemia virus and lentivirus are both retroviruses, but lentivirus can infect nondividing cells, while murine leukemia virus cannot. This is the reason murine leukemia virus is usually not used as a gene carrier in neurological disease treatments [4]
Adeno-associated virus, adenovirus, lentivirus, and human foamy virus can all be used as viral vectors for gene therapy for chronic pain
Summary
Chronic pain is defined by the U.S Food and Drug Administration as pain that persists for more than 3 months [1]. Murine leukemia virus and lentivirus are both retroviruses, but lentivirus can infect nondividing cells, while murine leukemia virus cannot This is the reason murine leukemia virus is usually not used as a gene carrier in neurological disease treatments [4]. The ideal gene therapy vector should not be able to replicate its own DNA and be conducive to long-term gene expression. Adeno-associated virus, adenovirus, lentivirus, and human foamy virus can all be used as viral vectors for gene therapy for chronic pain. These viral vectors are most commonly used because of their low immunogenicity, natural integration ability and other features. In this paper, published data about these vectors will be reviewed, and their applications in gene therapy of chronic pain will be discussed
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