Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Apr 7, 2015; 21(13): 3813-3825
Published online Apr 7, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i13.3813
New gene therapy strategies for hepatic fibrosis
Adriana M Salazar-Montes, Luis D Hernández-Ortega, Martha S Lucano-Landeros, Juan Armendariz-Borunda
Adriana M Salazar-Montes, Luis D Hernández-Ortega, Martha S Lucano-Landeros, Juan Armendariz-Borunda, Department of Molecular Biology and Genomics, Institute for Molecular Biology and Gene Therapy, University of Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Jalisco 44281, México
Author contributions: Salazar-Montes AM is the first author and wrote the article; Hernández-Ortega LD and Lucano-Landeros MS performed the literature search and created the figure; Armendariz-Borunda J was the principal investigator who contributed to the article writing, revision and supervision.
Conflict-of-interest: Authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose for this manuscript.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Juan Armendáriz-Borunda, Department of Molecular Biology and Genomics, Institute for Molecular Biology and Gene Therapy, University of Guadalajara, Sierra Mojada 950, Guadalajara, Jalisco 44281, México. armdbo@gmail.com
Telephone: +52 -33-10585317 Fax: +52-33-10585318
Received: October 15, 2014
Peer-review started: October 15, 2014
First decision: November 14, 2014
Revised: December 11, 2014
Accepted: February 12, 2015
Article in press: February 13, 2015
Published online: April 7, 2015
Core Tip

Core tip: Cirrhosis is the irreversible end result of fibrous scarring and hepatocellular regeneration. Cirrhosis is a disease without effective treatment and new therapeutic strategies to accomplish healing are continuously being sought. Liver-based gene therapy has been used to improve liver function using viral and non-viral vectors. This review provides an overview of the main strategies used in liver-gene therapy, with the hope of finding a niche application in a given clinical scenario.