Recent progress on nanosystems for nucleic acid delivery

Abstract

Nucleic acid (NA) based therapeutics have witnessed tremendous progress and breakthroughs in treating pathological conditions, including viral infections, neurological disorders, genetic diseases, and metabolic disorders. NAs such as plasmid DNA (pDNA), short interfering RNA (siRNA), microRNA (miRNA), and antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) can be modified to revolutionize personalized medicine. Despite the great potential of NA-based therapeutics, their clinical transformation is significantly hampered by instability, degradation, and inefficient delivery to the targeted site in the in vivo system. Lipid-based delivery systems hold great potential to overcome these shortcomings to enhance the delivery and bioavailability, improve stability, and increase the therapeutic effect of the NAs by delivering them to the active site. This review emphasized various nucleic acid-based therapeutics and their enhanced and improved delivery using different nanocarriers. Ultimately, the importance of lipid-based nanocarriers for delivering NAs is discussed and provides perspective in this field.