Polymeric Scaffold Based Gene Delivery Strategies to Improve Angiogenesis in Tissue Engineering: A Review

Abstract

ABSTRACTGene delivery is a potent alternative in comparison with angiogenic growth factor delivery to stimulate the growth of new blood vessels in tissue constructs. The combining of polymeric scaffolds with gene delivery is a promising strategy to achieve controlled, localized, and sustained release of vectors carrying genes encoding angiogenic growth factors (GF) into the target site. This can overcome the limitations of both direct delivery of growth factors and genes encoding them. Recently, various gene delivery based strategies have been used to improve angiogenesis. In this regard, surveying and discussing these studies along with their theoretical principals is required for the full understanding and exploring the great potential of this approach. To this aim, we have provided an illustrated and comprehensive review, which first explains the basic principles of the vascularization in the body and then the importance of the vascularization in tissue engineering. This has been followed by a systematic survey of gene delivery methods, the mechanism of gene uptake by cells and polymeric carrier preparation and loading methods. It can be concluded that in spite of some promising results, gene delivery based angiogenesis is still in its infancy, requiring further investigations to explore the potential of this strategy.