Applications of Sleeping Beauty transposons for nonviral gene therapy

Virus-based gene therapy has advanced to clinical trials; however, this approach may result in serious adverse events including oncogenesis and the possibility of triggering fatal immune responses. Nonviral gene delivery approaches have a better safety profile, but their in vivo application has been largely limited in the past due to their inefficient delivery into cells and lack of stable chromosomal integration that is necessary for long-term therapeutic benefit. However, recent advances suggest that the use of Sleeping Beauty transposons, a novel integrating nonviral vector system, are capable of achieving long-lasting therapeutic levels of transgene expression in preclinical settings. These observations and other ongoing relevant studies may unlock the therapeutic potential of nonviral gene therapy for human diseases.