[Gene therapy for the treatment of hypertension]

Gene therapy for hypertension is very important for the next generation of antihypertensive drugs. Important question regarding vector-related limitations and suboptimal in vivo delivery systems will require expeditious attention for gene therapy to become a more widely applicable option in cardiovascular diseases including hypertension. However, the elucidation of molecular mechanisms of transcriptional activation of several important genes in the cardiovascular physiology enables us to develop clinical application of gene therapy for hypertension at the level of transcription factors. Recent studies showed that in vivo or ex vivo transfection of double-stranded oligodeoxynucleotides to block the binding of nuclear factors to specific cis-elements in the promoter regions of several genes resulted in inhibition of gene trans-activation and suppressed pathological changes in the cardiovascular system.