Lentivirus Vector-Mediated Gene Transfer to Cardiomyocytes

Gene therapy has the potential to reverse the genetic causes and modify the pathophysiology of many innate and acquired diseases (1 –4 ). Transduction of foreign DNA into cardiac myocytes is of potential value for therapeutic applications (5 ,6 ) and also offers an experimental approach to investigate the roles of individual genes in cardiovascular pathophysiology. Both efficient delivery and long-term expression of transduced genes is required before the full benefit of genetic manipulation strategies can be realized in the cardiovascular system. However, all the current methods of gene delivery have major limitations.