EurekAlert -- Before gene therapy becomes practical for treating human diseases, researchers must master the details of safe and effective delivery. Cardiology researchers at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia have advanced delivery techniques by creating a versatile synthetic material that can bind to a variety of gene therapy vectors and can be custom-designed for controlled local release of therapeutic genes at a disease site. In an animal study, the research team used their new synthetic formulation to bind adenoviruses to bare metal stents, tiny metal scaffolds inside the carotid arteries of rats. Adenovirus served as a gene therapy vector to carry genes for an enzyme that significantly reduced restenosis, the hazardous narrowing of a blood vessel that often occurs despite the presence of a stent designed to hold it open.
