[Research progress of in vivo nucleic acid delivery with poly (ethylenimine)]

To review the current status and advances of in vivo nucleic acid delivery mediated by poly(ethylenimine) (PEI).

The related home and abroad literature about nucleic acid delivery with applications in cancer treatments and tissue engineering was extensively reviewed and analyzed.

A variety of in vivo study on the potential of PEI-mediated nucleic acid delivery has been carried out and made certain effects in the animal model, ranging from cancer treatments to rectification of physiological defects (eg. cranial defect and corneal epithelium defect). Tail vein injection is the most commonly adopted route of administration in vivo, followed by pulmonary administration and intralesional injection. However, transfection and expression in vivo have some shortcomings, such as low transfection efficiency and short expression time, so there are some limitation in the clinical application.

PEI mediated nucleic acid delivery provides a good method for cancer treatments and rectification of physiological defects. For future research, not only should more in vivo animal testing be done, but the procedures of experimentation also need to be standardized.