Apoptosis is a physiologically essential mechanism of
cell and
plays an important
role in reducing the development and progression of
tumors . The appealing strategy for
cancer therapy is to target the lesions that induce
apoptosis in
cancer cells .
Survivin , the smallest member of the mammalian inhibitors of the
apoptosis protein family , is upregulated in various
malignancies to protect
cells from
apoptosis .
Survivin knockdown could induce
cancer cell apoptosis and inhibit
tumor -
angiogenesis .
Survivin expression would be silenced by
microRNA (
miRNA )-mediated
RNA interference . However, noninvasive and
tissue -specific
gene delivery
techniques remain absent recently and the utilizations of
miRNA expression vectors have been limited by inefficient delivery
technique , especially in vivo. On the other
hand , safe and promising
technologies of
gene transfection would be valuable in clinical
gene therapy . Successful
treatment of
gene transfer
method would
lead to a new and readily available approach in the anticancer
research . Sonoporation is an alternative
technique of
gene delivery that uses ultrasound targeted
microbubble destruction to create pores in the
cell membrane . Based on our previous studies, in this article, we postulated that the
transfection of
miRNA could be mediated by the combination of sonoporation and
polyethylenimine (PEI) which was one of the most effective poly-cationic
gene vectors and enhance the
endocytosis of
plasmids DNA and hypothesized that the
gene silencing and
apoptosis induction with
miRNA targeting
human Survivin would be improved by this novel
technique . In our
opinion , this novel combination of sonoporation and PEI could enhance targeted
gene delivery effectively and might be a feasible, novel candidate for
gene therapy .