A review of the developments of characteristics of PEI derivatives for gene delivery applications

Abstract

Redox-active stimuli have gained a great deal of interest as an indicating factor for designing bioresponsive matrices in gene delivery. Hence, a wide range of gene carriers has been designed incorporating the redox-stimuli characteristics. The most important type of gene carriers is the class of redox responsive polymers. Among them, disulfide incorporated redox-responsive polyethyleneimine (PEI) and its derivatives, as a result of their outstanding DNA entrapping characteristics and their intrinsic endosomolytic activity, have attracted considerable attention in recent studies. The review presents the main developments of the characteristics of PEI derivatives and their applications in gen..