A Review: a Novel Gelatin Based Delivery Systems for Gene Therapy and Paclitaxel Targeting Cancer Cells

Gelatin is a natural biocompatible, nontoxic, edible and an inexpensive molecule. These properties result in its wide applications and recently it has been used for the delivery of the gene therapeutic entities such as plasmid DNA and paclitaxel drug based delivery for the various types of Cancer cells including Bladder cancer cells and prostate cancer cells. Generally, gelatin nanoparticles can be made via a simple coacervation method using water-miscible non-solvents for gelatin, like alcohols, or salts, like sodium sulfate. Since most of the effective non-viral gene carriers suffer from nonbiodegradability and cell toxicity, these properties of gelatin have made it a promising choice for non-viral gene delivery systems. The preparation of paclitaxel-loaded gelatin nanoparticles and their biological activity in human bladder cancer cells and gelatin based delivery system for cancer gene therapy includes the non-viral vectors and the viral vectors which dominates in clinical trials. The paclitaxel-loaded gelatin nanoparticles represent a rapid release, biologically active paclitaxel formulation that can be used for intravesical bladder cancer. The hydrophilicity of the gelatin enhances fluid uptake, whereas the hydrophobicity of polymers such as poly (lactic acid) and poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) limits diffusion which would result in the slower drug release. The future of these promising approaches lies in the development of better techniques for preparing drug-gelatin complex or gene-gelatin complexes with the added advantage of biosafety of the