Abstract

BACKGROUND
Delayed wound healings in diabetic patients are related with the impairment of the expressions of various growth factors. Treatments using growth factors have been attempted on diabetic foot ulcer. VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor) accelerates neo-angiogenesis on the early phase of the wound healing and exerts chemo-attractive effect for the other growth factors and cytokines. Non-viral gene transfer strategies are attractive tool for the gene therapy due to the safety and the versatility, but the low efficiency has been the serious problem. METHODS: We performed the VEGF gene therapy using reconstructed minicircle MINI-pbetaVEGF DNA with a polymeric carrier, polyethylenimine (PEI, 25 kDa) in HEK293, CHO, and NIH3T3 cell lines, and compared its efficiency with the conventional VEGF plasmid pbetaVEGF. RESULTS: The levels of expressed VEGF were higher in the groups using BPEI (branched PEI) as a gene carrier than naked plasmid transfer in all cell lines (P < 0.05). The minicircle MINI-pbetaVEGF DNA showed much higher VEGF expression than conventional plasmid pbetaVEGF (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Minicircle DNA MINI-pbetaVEGF showed much higher transfection efficiency than conventional plasmid pbetaVEGF. It might be used in actual human clinical trial due to its higher efficiency and possible safety for the treatment of diabetic foot ulcer.

• Keywords: Gene therapy;Minicircle DNA;Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF);