Perspectives for the future developments of gene therapy for autoimmune and inflammatory therapy

Important scientific advances in the understanding of the molecular and cellular events that lead to the development of autoimmune inflammatory conditions have identified a number of targets that could be used for the development of therapeutic interventions that exploit gene and cell-mediated delivery.Relevant to these advances are the results of clinical trials using biological agents, genetic and cellular interventions and more recently the discovery of new genetic predisposition genes in multinational genome-wide association studies, epigenetics and its role in disease progression and finally, therapeutic targeting and exploitation of microRNAs. Application of this broad knowledge is being facilitated by the improvement of gene delivery vectors whose characteristics are being constantly improved and transformed to achieve tissue targeting, long-term expression, transcriptional control and low immunogenicity.